OVERHEADS are just a part of running a business. But it’s the small things like telephone bills, stationary and your fuel bill, that eventually start catching up with you.

With the recent hike in interest rates and the ever spiralling costs of petrol, having control over how much you spend is even more crucial.

Oliver Thema, who runs Windy’s Fashion, keeps a close watch on her business’s overheads. She instructs staff to use landline instead of cellphone numbers and when they need to call cellphone numbers they must use their cellphones.

She has also made significant savings on her internet bill by moving to ADSL from dial-up for which she paid some R600 a month. Now her bill comes to just half this.

Another saving she makes is to use the cuttings that are left over from her machines to make extra clothes. These she says help to cover last-minute orders from clients.

Alec Dirksen, who runs a Free State stationary manufacturing and distribution business, says to cut down on waste he gets as many of his deliveries done in a single trip as possible.

Dirksen, who runs Thuto Stationary, says he applies the same thinking to telephone calls, instructing his staff to do as much as they can in a single phone call to avoid repeat calls. He also gets staff to record their calls.

Dirksen also sells the business’s paper waste to recycling businesses for a small fee. The money he makes helps to pay for the company’s fuel bill, he says.

He says sometimes he has heavy orders and has to get his staff of 30 to work longer hours, but he tries to avoid double shifts because these can be costly – his wage bill for night shifts is one and half times as much as the daytime shift’s wage bill. Instead, he gets his staff to work an hour or so of extra time.

Improving staff morale is another way to cut down on unnecessary costs. It helped Sedick Jappie (pictured above), who runs Superior Doors, a leading company in the cupboard door manufacturing sector, to cut down on unwanted wastage in his business.

Jappie was recently a participant in the National Productivity Institute’s (NPI) Workplace Challenge Programme which helped him to cut down on wasted time and staff absenteeism.

One of the net results of the programme was that he set up an innovation chart for employees to record new and better ways to carry out processes in the business.

He also set up bar charts on targets his employees needed to reach. “You can’t expect people to aspire to anything if they don’t have goals and targets,” says Jappie. He says if morale is high people work as a team.

Jappie says the NPI programme helped re-engineer a new change in his workplace and increased productivity by some 20%.

Selwyn Schrieff, a business consultant who runs SMME Specialist Services, says business owners should look closely at the small things that they can save on, like stationary and telephone calls, as these will often inform you of the bigger things you can save on in your business.

Says Schrieff: “It’s a mindset. As soon as you start knuckling down with the small things, you’ll begin to understand the big things.”

He agrees that increasing your staff’s productivity is one way of getting more for the same costs.

He suggest business owners explain to their staff what the business’s operational costs are, because many often confuse the difference between sales, operating costs and profit. Then instruct them that if they reach certain targets, they are entitled to a bonus of a certain amount.

He says a fixed cost like rent can be expensive, but you should always consider your options carefully before moving.

He suggest business owners calculate things such as the cost of changing signage, letterheads and paying for a removal company.

Contact Thema on 015 291 1198, Jappie on 086 111 4415, Dirksen on 051 432 4475 and SMME Specialist Services on 041 481 1366.