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 horses lying in ambush in Troy have occupied our roads (cars), our sight (screens), our ears (music), women's dressing tables (cosmetics) and our stomachs (western fast food).

In this increasingly peaceful world, the war between countries is evolving into competition among enterprises. In this battlefield without smoke, the contest of experts has evolved into a contest of details, and two or three strokes can tell the difference.

Speaking of B&Q, their frugal management has long been well known. B&Q's cost control can be said to really achieve the details in the details. B&Q is affiliated to Cuifeng Group, one of the top 500 enterprises in the world. This group is a large-scale international decoration and building materials retail group with a history of more than 30 years, and its enterprise scale ranks third in the world and first in Europe. B&Q has opened 18 branches since 1998 entered Chinese mainland.

Retail is essentially doing business. For businessmen, what they do is to buy and sell, relying on increasing income and reducing expenses. Thrift is regarded as an excellent quality by B&Q. They often say, "Our money is only used for business-related things."

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

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

There are only two items on 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 almost impossible to be refined, such as: domestic travel expenses in 850 yuan, trolley repair expenses in 90 yuan, electrical safety shoes in 34 yuan, and mysterious customer departure fee of 333 yuan. ...

Every expenditure has an annual budget and a monthly plan, 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, it will be summarized by the finance department and sent to managers. Overexpenditure and abnormal data will be marked in red, and managers will pay attention to the red part of the report. During the meeting, relevant departments need to explain the overspending.

This is the system. When the general manager of B&Q keeps the price of pens he bought within the budget of office expenses, it is best to buy only ordinary 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 magnetic cards and passwords to make phone calls."

"You put the official materials in an envelope, and everyone takes turns watching. Everyone makes a copy, which is too wasteful. "

"Department P is over budget this month, and a store seems to have overspent some expenses. You ask them to pay attention to the adjustment when making the budget at the end of this month. Departments that exceed the budget may not have bonuses. "

"The damaged edge KF version of your tape 1/4."

"It is too expensive for POS machines to go to G line, and they will go to J line in the future."

……

B&Q people say so.

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

However, B&Q also pointed out that the money should be spent, and the money that should not be spent should be spent less or even not. Don't confuse the relationship between "saving money" and "controlling costs", and pay attention to the benefits of spending money.

The inculcation of this culture begins with the on-the-job training of new employees, and is often instilled and strengthened at daily morning meetings. Employees know that the implementation of enterprise strategy needs to instill a culture of saving.

It is this sense of economy that makes B&Q's operating expenses account for a much lower proportion of sales than its peers. Take B&Q Jingjin Four Seasons Store as an example. Another building materials supermarket in Beijing, with the same business area of 20,000 square meters, has sales of only 1/2 of that of Golden Four Seasons, but its operating expenses are double that of Golden Four Seasons. It can be seen that the cost saved by B&Q from details is considerable.

Like B&Q, Wal-Mart is saving money. 1962 In the spring, 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 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 10.6% of the total operating expenses, while Wal-Mart only accounts for 0.4%. Usually, Wal-Mart's advertisements are only written in black and white, far less exquisite than Carrefour's production and frequent delivery. The promotion department of shopping malls often organizes training on promotion skills such as artistic fonts, with the aim of making all promotion activities be 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, of course, they are coin-operated telephones. In Dalian store, employees don't even have toilet paper, let alone soap. In many cases, employees wash their hands with hand sanitizer, shower gel and even washing powder that the department can't sell.

Even sam walton often shares a room with others when he goes out, and Wal-Mart employees are no exception. When the annual meeting of "Wal-Mart 200 1" was held in China, representatives from all over the country 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 only stay in three-star hotels, and they will leave the next day after opening the store-one more day will cost them another day!

Wal-Mart stores in China have no special translators. Wal-Mart only provided temporary translation for every American expert before building the store, and left a month later, generally working as a secretary and translator. When any foreign executive visits a store, their interpreter is often the director China of the relevant department who accompanies him.

In Wal-Mart's China store, competitions such as "Best Team" are often held, and the winning team will get a flowing flag, 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, and Wal-Mart employees didn't mind.

In short, advocating thrift is not only a personal matter for employees, but also related to the amount of money spent by enterprises. Do not underestimate the cost of a piece of paper and a pen. Many a mickle makes a mickle, which is also a big expense. Therefore, enterprises should start from the details: strive for everyone to be frugal and regard frugality as corporate culture. Only by dealing with these details can we achieve great things, because details are power.

18 quantify the details, and the management work can be done more thoroughly.

When talking about internal management, company managers often talk about how many rules and regulations have been formulated, what is the workflow 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, unable to do what they have done, unable to grasp what they have caught, and unable to achieve the expected results in short. The reason is often because they don't use quantifiable standards when arranging work or formulating rules and regulations, and ultimately one person gets 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 a slogan hanging in the service unit: "Smile Service". What kind of smile is a smile? Wal-Mart requires customers to smile all the time, and the note written at the back is "Show 8 teeth"-quantify the details, and show 8 teeth is the real smile. McDonald's in the United States has quantified the details of each process, and even French fries and beef burgers have detailed regulations. McDonald's rules: Bake the beef patties for 20 minutes, and throw them away if they can't be sold. This is a quantitative detail. Any company has a workflow, but if the workflow is not quantified in detail, it cannot be standardized. Many companies are proud of passing the IS09000 quality system certification, in fact, because they agree that the certification system can quantify many details in the workflow.

Managers with quantitative awareness of details usually put the specific time, the quantity to be completed and the quality requirements to be achieved throughout the whole work process when arranging work. 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 20 sorted meeting materials to the meeting room before 8: 30 tomorrow morning." In a short sentence, the "specific time"-"before 8: 30 in the morning"-"20 conference materials"-"quality requirements"-"finishing" are clearly stated. This makes managers immediately form a very precise job requirement in their minds, 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 conference room", which may be understood as sending one or ten copies; Send it in the morning or afternoon; Send it now or tomorrow; Drafts are ok, so are printed documents.

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 vague work assignments. If employees are not clear about the tasks they accept, especially the tasks they accept at the initial assignment, their work performance will be difficult to meet your expected requirements.

For example, the personnel manager only asks a employee who specializes in welfare to "design a new employee welfare plan", which ignores a lot of basic information. The complete dialogue 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 with lower premiums. 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 provide the same level of welfare in all aspects. "

In short, uncertain orders will have different effects among different employees. For high-quality employees, of course, they can perfectly complete the work assigned by the leaders. 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 finish the work on time with good quality and quantity according to the manager's consciousness when executing the same orders. This is the embodiment of high-quality leadership and management art.

Maybe you will feel that the quantification of details is a complicated thing, and even you will fall into the "quantification trap" if you are not careful: the quantification of deviation, the quantification of large and complete details, and the quantification of trivial details. But quantifying the details doesn't need to cost too much. The key is whether you can do it or not.

An entrepreneur put 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 to 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.