$632 Million in Savings: You Want a Piece of That?

After the layoffs and salary freezes, after the fire sales and financial restructurings, after the tears—it's time to get serious about making your company more efficient. Hacking expenses to keep budgets in line with anemic earnings may be a necessary evil, but it can also be shortsighted. How about using a cost-cutting imperative to reassess what your company does, what it needs to fix, and what it might get into next? Why not turn cost cutting into cost management, investing in systems that reduce some costs now and more next year, positioning you to excel in the brighter times that can't be too far off?

Companies are increasingly using information technology to cut budgets, avoid expenses, and produce new revenue opportunities. We decided to collect 14 company stories into a super cost-cutting package: nearly $632 million in savings inside this magazine.

These stories offer ideas about how to make your business processes more efficient using information technology, from e-learning and e-procurement to internal collaboration and new kinds of customer service. We've included reports from some of the biggest companies in the world as well as some small local outfits. They've quantified their savings in different ways: Some used technology to reduce bottom-line costs, others put a dollar figure on problems they avoided.

Spending less—rather than making more—has a mathematical beauty that will never go out of style. After all, if you've got a 20 percent profit margin, cutting a mere $200,000 in costs is equivalent to $1 million in new revenue.

Copyright © 2002 Ziff Davis Media Inc. All Rights Reserved. Originally appearing in Ziff Davis Smart Business.