The trend to shop online has taken a firm grasp in our lives.

While the lure of more shopping and shipping options exist, the real attraction is our desire for lowest costs, convenience and increased variety.

The 2014 Christmas shopping season was hailed as one of the busiest, largely due to these factors. With popular distribution hubs, processing up to 20,000 next day deliveries per hour in the week before Christmas, customers have come to expect almost instant shopping experiences.

Meeting said expectations will lead to an increase in operational costs. By re-evaluating costs and exploring smarter manufacturing and distribution processes, all businesses can still reduce their costs and yield even larger profits.

The sustainability bandwagon is one that many firms are quick to jump on, especially at the beginning of a new year. Many of them release sustainability policy goals for the year.

Whether they stick to them is another thing entirely. Some common ‘going green’ goals include:

• Reduce their carbon footprint

• Ensure the business becomes resilient to climate change

• Work with suppliers to reduce the embedded carbon in products and supply chain
  look for ways to help customers reduce waste

• Assess the impact of packaging and develop more innovative packaging solutions
  use more sustainably sourced raw materials

• Ensure stores and depots become more energy efficient

• Explore ways to increase usage of renewable energy through self-generation and procurement
  reduce emissions from transport operations and trial innovative low carbon solutions.

Becoming more sustainable is a worthy goal, but it hinges on addressing the correct issues. A food retailer intent on reducing pallet waste to 0% will have less of an impact than if they chose to focus on how their refrigeration and/or heating processes impact the environment.

The business also needs to understand it’s customer base and exactly how much it ‘costs to serve’ them. This can vary widely across industries and products. An example is a supermarket that includes a home delivery service. For one, distribution can get complex and also expensive. On the chance that the customer isn’t at home, it can lead to a redelivery request and even more cost. By re-evaluating costs and exploring smarter manufacturing and distribution processes, all businesses can still reduce their costs and yield even larger profits.

That being said, businesses can still reduce overall spending, by addressing key costs.

One mantra is Reduce, Reuse and Recycle. Waste can a large cost constraint in business. Sometimes, it’s not very obvious. The following are four common, yet overlooked examples of waste in businesses around the world:

• A photocopier left on overnight uses up enough energy to make 1,500 copies.
  switching off the non-essential office equipment overnight can save the equivalent of running a small car for 100 miles.

• In a warehouse, if picking routes are haphazardly planned, it leads to the double waste of energy and time.

• Scheduling a buffer time for deliveries, can lead to wasted effort, if there are no staff there to receive the goods.

Like going green, this waste and the savings that curbing it will generate can be difficult to quantify in terms of cash. But it is extremely important that we do so. From using professionals to plan warehouse layouts to purchasing fuel efficient and electric vehicles; there are many ways to curb cost. In the long run, continuous improvement is vital to running a profitable and productive business.

Join us next week for our six recommended ways to cut your warehouse costs in 2015.

At Monarch Shelving, our products help proffer solutions to your warehouse needs. Considering your cost and space constraints, we deliver custom racking, shelving and other storage solutions. Need new racking? Call us. Need high-grade refurbished shelving?

Call us today.