Gone unchecked, habitual spending can become wasted money
Nearly three-quarters of business spend sits with suppliers, some of which is ‘over spec’d’, unnecessary, or habitual rather than tightly aligned to business objectives. In many businesses, there is a steady stream of cash out of the door, which could and should be challenged. Stop Cost targets immediate and decisive cost improvement, stopping waste in real-time and reinstalling a commercial culture in budget holders.
“This service from Proxima helped to release cash flow at a critical time for our business; longer term, it reset our approach to spending.”
Create a commercial culture and take control of spend
Controlling mid-tail spend is a challenge for Procurement; still significant but typically too high in volume to influence. While many automation/ technology solutions focus on helping to buy better, most fail to answer two more important questions: firstly, “are we spending on the right things, in a cost-conscious way?” and secondly, “How can we encourage our teams to think more commercially?”.
In a Stop Cost programme we help organisations to spend smarter. We bring:
- Proven method and process for implementing effective Stop Cost models
- Expertise to constructively challenge costs and suggest alternative solutions
- Market knowledge and insight to drive legacy process improvements
Proxima’s approach to stopping unnecessary spend
Stop Cost is most often deployed to drive short-term savings and to reset spending behaviours. It needs executive-level participation and finance stakeholder commitment to drive momentum, maintain focus, and enable decisions at pace, but also an open mindset from budget holders and stakeholders. We challenge spend against supply market norms and business drivers such as growth, brand/reputation, customer service, and keeping the lights on.
We deliver:
- Set up and initial facilitation of the Stop Cost process and governance group
- Market insight challenge to complement business need challenge
- Capacity and capability to support stakeholders in supplier change or negotiation
