What is the role of details in cost control?

Scholars who study the global economy compare multinational companies to Trojan horses in Greek mythology. Today, the ambush in the Trojan horse has captured our road (car), our sight (screen), our ears (music), women's dressing tables (cosmetics) and our stomachs (western fast food).

In this increasingly peaceful world, the war between countries is turning into competition between enterprises. In this battlefield without smoke, the contest of experts has evolved into a contest of details, and two or three moves can be divided into high and low.

When it comes to B&Q, their frugal management has long been known. B&Q's cost control can be said to have truly achieved the details in the details. B&Q is affiliated to the British Cuifeng Group, one of the top 5 enterprises in the world. This group is a large-scale international decorative building materials retail group with a history of more than 3 years, and its enterprise scale ranks third in the world and first in Europe. B&Q has opened 18 branches since it entered the mainland of China in 1998.

The retail format is essentially doing business. For businessmen, what they do is buying and selling, relying on open source and reducing expenditure. Thrift is regarded as an excellent quality by B&Q. They often say: "Our money is only used for business-related things."

The general manager's office of B&Q is very simple, with only one conference table for six people, several chairs without armrests, and an ordinary gray-white filing cabinet with no grade. With these few items, the office is not well off.

"As long as the signature pens in the hands of the general manager are 1.5 yuan, the administrative department will purchase them uniformly at a price not higher than the company's guidance price. B&Q thinks that since everyone can write, why use expensive ones?

there are only two items in B&Q's operating expenses statement-controllable expenses and uncontrollable expenses. Although their sales situation has been good, and sometimes there is even a straight upward trend, the operating expenses are still refined to the point where they can hardly be refined, such as: domestic travel expenses in 85 yuan, cart repair expenses in 9 yuan, electrical safety shoes in 34 yuan, and mysterious customers' store-leaving expenses of 333 yuan ... < P > They have an annual budget and a monthly plan for each expense, so that every expenditure must be based on evidence, and the implementation will be linked to the assessment.

every month, every quarter and every year, the financial summary will be sent to the managers. Overexpenditure and abnormal data will be specially marked in red, and managers will pay attention to the red part of the report. During the meeting, relevant departments need to explain the overspent part.

It is this system that when the general manager of B&Q keeps the price of pens he buys within the budget of office expenses, he'd better only buy ordinary signature pens from 1.5 yuan. Because the budget is not only for the whole region, but also for individual stores and departments, including the general manager.

"Unless there are special circumstances, employees go out to work by bus instead of taking a taxi."

"Repairs are usually done by our property itself."

"employees need a magnetic card and password to call."

"You put the official materials in a file bag, and everyone can take turns reading them. It's too wasteful for everyone to make a copy."

"Department P has exceeded the budget this month, and one store seems to have exceeded some expenses. Please ask them to pay attention to the adjustment when making the budget at the end of this month, and the department that exceeds the budget may not receive any bonus."

"You stick the damaged part of the 1/4 edge of KF version with adhesive tape."

"The fees charged for POS machines going to G Bank are too high, so they will all go to J Bank in the future."

...

People in B&Q said.

frugality has become an organizational behavior of B&Q. In B&Q, frugality has even been regarded as a culture.

But B&Q also pointed out that we should spend the money we should spend, spend less or even not spend the money we shouldn't spend, don't confuse the relationship between "saving money" and "cost control", and pay attention to the benefit of spending money.

The inculcation of this culture has started since the job training of new employees, and it is often instilled and strengthened in the morning meeting every day. Employees know that the implementation of the enterprise's strategy needs to be instilled with a culture of saving.

It is this awareness of economy that B&Q's operating expenses account for a much lower percentage of sales than its peers. Take B&Q Beijing Golden Four Seasons Store as an example. Another building materials supermarket in Beijing, with the same business area of 2, square meters, has sales of only 1/2 of that of Golden Four Seasons Store, but its operating expenses are twice as high as that of Golden Four Seasons Store. It can be seen that the cost saved by B&Q from the details is considerable.

Like B&Q, Wal-Mart is also careful in saving money. In the spring of 1962, the first retail store in Sam was about to be completed. Sam chose "W-A-L-M-A-R-T" when choosing the name of the store, because it has only seven letters. Sam thinks that it will save money to buy only a few letters to spell out a signboard.

In fact, Wal-Mart rarely advertises in the United States or anywhere in the world. Kmart's advertising accounts for 1.6% of the total operating expenses, while Wal-Mart only accounts for .4%. Usually, Wal-Mart's advertising is only a few pieces of black and white paper, which is far less exquisite than Carrefour's production and frequent delivery. The store's promotion department often organizes training on promotional techniques such as artistic fonts, in order to make all promotional activities solved within the department as much as possible. Because saving manpower means saving costs.

In Wal-Mart, many stores prepare free pure water for employees, but it is impossible to prepare paper cups. Some stores have telephones in the staff canteen-coin phones, of course. In Dalian store, there is no toilet paper for employees, let alone soap. In many cases, employees use hand sanitizer, shower gel and even washing powder that the department can't sell to wash their hands.

Even sam walton often shares a room with others when he goes out, and Wal-Mart employees are no exception. When the "21 Wal-Mart" annual meeting in China was held, representatives from all over the country who were above the manager level lived in a guest house. Every time before opening a new store, American experts will come from headquarters to help build the store. It is said that these people are only staying in a three-star hotel, and they leave immediately the next day after opening the store-one more day will cost them another day!

Wal-Mart stores in China have no dedicated translators. Wal-Mart only provided temporary translators for every American expert before building the store, and left after one month, usually working as a secretary and translator. When any foreign executive makes a shop tour, their translator is often the director China of the relevant department accompanying him.

In Wal-Mart's China store, competitions such as "Best Team" are often conducted, and the winning team will get a flowing banner, because the whole store has only one side. At a "fun sports meeting" held in Dalian store, the first prize was actually a model made of plastic foam-it was originally a symbol, so Wal-Mart employees didn't mind.

in a word, advocating frugality is not only a personal matter for employees, but also related to the amount spent by enterprises. Don't underestimate the cost of a piece of paper and a pen. If every little makes a mickle, it is also a big expense. Therefore, enterprises should start from the details: strive for everyone to be frugal and regard frugality as a corporate culture. Only by dealing with these details can we achieve great things, because details are strength.

18 Only by quantifying the details can the management work be done more thoroughly

When talking about internal management, company managers often talk about how many rules and regulations are formulated, what work processes are there and how comprehensive the work manual is, but they often ignore the essence of internal management, that is, the quantification of management details. Managers who lack the sense of "quantification" often feel that their subordinates are ineffective in doing things, failing to do what they have done, failing to grasp what they have grasped, and failing to achieve their expected results in short. The reason is often because they don't use quantifiable standards when arranging work or formulating rules and regulations, and eventually one person will get one result, which reduces efficiency and delays work.

the quantification of details is to put forward the requirements of work content and system in the form of quantification in management, and make it cover the whole process of work. We often see that service units will hang a slogan: "Smiling service". What kind of smile is called a smile? Wal-Mart stipulates that customers should always smile, and the note written at the back is "Show 8 teeth"-quantify the details, and show 8 teeth is really laughing. Mcdonald's in the United States quantifies the details of every process, and even French fries and beef burgers have detailed regulations. McDonald's rules: beef patties are baked for 2 minutes, and if they are not sold, they will be thrown away. This is the quantitative detail. Any company has a workflow, but if the workflow is not quantified in detail, it can't be standardized. Many companies are proud of passing the IS9 quality system certification, in fact, because they agree that the certification system can quantify many details in the workflow.

When arranging the work, managers with the awareness of detail quantification usually put the specific time, the quantity to be completed, what quality requirements to meet, etc. throughout the whole work process. He will quantify every detail as much as possible, hoping to make the management work more thorough and detailed, and at the same time be more standardized and orderly, so as to make a good reference for employees.

For a simple example, a leader ordered, "You should send 2 sorted meeting materials to the meeting room before 8: 3 tomorrow morning." In a short sentence, the "specific time"-"before 8: 3 in the morning", "quantity completed"-"twenty meeting materials", "quality requirements"-"sorted out" are all made clear. This makes the manager immediately form a very precise work requirement in his mind, and it is not easy to produce deviation. But if there is no "quantity" in this sentence, it becomes "you send the information to the meeting room" This matter may be understood as sending one copy or sending ten copies; Send it in the morning or in the afternoon; Send it now or tomorrow; Drafts are fine, and printed documents are fine.

you should have a comprehensive understanding of the work to be assigned, because only in this way can you explain the purpose of the work and the expected project results to the authorized employees. Many managers often make general and vague work assignments, and if employees are unclear about the tasks they accept, especially the tasks they accept at the time of initial assignment, their work performance will be difficult to meet your expected requirements.

For example, if a HR manager only asks an employee who specializes in welfare to "design a new employee welfare plan", it is ignoring a lot of basic information. A complete conversation should be: "We want to find a new insurance company, provided that the insurance they provide is more inclined to protect the interests of customers and can provide more comprehensive insurance at a lower premium. Go and see if you can find at least three insurance companies with reasonable welfare terms, which can reduce our insurance expenses by at least 3% compared with last year's total, and at the same time provide the same welfare level in all aspects. "

in a word, uncertain command will have different effects among different employees. For high-quality employees, of course, they can complete the work assigned by the leaders perfectly. But for employees with average quality, there will be deviations. In fact, in essence, management is an art of completing tasks through others. The level of managers is not that you can let high-quality employees do things well, but more importantly, let ordinary employees do their work well, so that every employee can complete the work with good quality, quantity and time according to the manager's consciousness when executing the same order. This is the reflection of high-quality leadership and management art.

Maybe you will feel that the quantification of details is a tedious and complicated matter, and you may even fall into the "quantification trap" if you are not careful: the quantification of deviations, the quantification of big and complete details, and the quantification of trivial details. But it doesn't cost much to quantify the details. The key is whether you can do it or not.

an entrepreneur said it well: doing things seriously is just doing things right, and doing things with your heart can do things well. This requires our managers to work hard, speed up the cultivation of detail quantification awareness and constantly innovate the detail quantification system. This will give full play to the enthusiasm of employees and improve the quality of products and services.