“Paper” subject in a company can be explored in different ways. Of course it is not the most expensive cost but it will be a good way to start our Bleneraida’s PnL global transformation.

Cost of paper:

Many companies forget or do not take the time to study their suppliers and to concentrate a cost or group of costs to one unique supplier. In this way you make daily tasks easier, simpler and you get more power to negotiate the pricing. A good supplier is not only the one that offers you the best price, it is also a company that shares the same values, that is respecting deadlines and agreements, that allows you to have flexible payment terms (even if it is very hard to have such offers today), it is a company that offers the best quality price ratio.

Example: Let’s say that the company X is using every month 10 * 500 white paper A4.

What we realize above is that the company X, by reducing the average price per paper and by concentrating the cost line on one unique supplier realizes 37% of economies, you how much can you make?

Of course, the crisis has change the way we make business today. Many of your suppliers might have lost clients, or have seen their turnover reduced because of the crisis. This is why you can engage a negotiation on your collaboration. In conclusion the exercise can be resumed in few points:

• Check that one/two suppliers can answer to all office supplies needs and especially for anything related to paper.
• Ask them to negotiate an agreement. By ensuring it will be your unique supplier, you can ask for a better price. This type of agreement can be negotiated with any store, even if you are going to the neighborhood’s supermarket.
• Ensure that the new price is lower than your average today’s price.
• Beware to negotiate the terms of the price modification and the frequency of revision of the price.

Training of employees:

It is of course impossible to avoid employee training if you want to implement a green company culture. If you cannot afford experts to train your employees, there are other ways to achieve your goals but you will have to dedicate time. For example, you know that for reducing your paper costs, your employees need to understand why it is so important, what are the aim and the long term gain they and the company will have. According to the activity the training will have to be adapted to the environment in which the employees work. Finally, you will have to ensure that the new rules are followed too: reporting files, bonus[1] system etc… The important is that the training guarantees that it has explained what employees win and why it is important for the company.

Procedures using paper:

All procedures using paper should be revised and improved in harmony with the new target. Using procedure mapping can be really effective:

• Draw your procedure as it is, writing the paper usage (quantity, reason, …) at each task,
• Modify the existing procedure keeping only the required paper copies and improving by deleting redundant parts or tasks that do not give any added value.

Schemes must underline a least the following: the roles, description of the steps, input and output. And you must always review the procedure with the concerned departments/persons in order to ensure you have all the experts around the table that will have the information on whether a step is necessary (because of the law, the business practices or any external obligation).

Adapted facilities:

Implementing specific procedure for recycling, facilities of your company must be organized as such. You cannot ask your employees to be strict on the recycling if you do not provide at least 2 garbage cans to each (one for various trashes and one for recycling). If you do not want to have on garbage can for paper recycling per employees you can have one for a group of employees by making sure that recycling rules are respected and that your community provide the corresponding public service. Finally do never forget that any new process or procedure must be followed up, so do not hesitate to ensure a one year or non-stop follow-up of the cost line you just improved. In case you notice an unwanted result, corrective actions should be taken as soon as possible.

As you see green company culture can be applied without engaging high costs or unbearable changes. The most important is to understand your business, to understand and take into account the people in your business and to analyze it targeting improvement in efficiency and in green profitability.

Bleneraida is here to help you in this task, if you are interested do not hesitate to contact me here