Cutting costs without affecting employees

The retrenchment saga has unveiled the inventive side of the Indian firms with each of them designing innovative ways to cut cost without affecting the employees and clients.
To cut on electricity bills Kotak Mahindra Bank introduced the 'Kill Bill' campaign under which air-conditioners are set at a particular temperature and computer monitors are asked to be switched off when not in use. For the successful utilization of the campaign, posters elaborating the importance of it are displayed in conference rooms and at various entry and exit points of the company. SBI has begun using the e-mail instead of posts to reduce costs. The bank lures its customers to go for online transaction, by offering reward points to those who use the electronic system. Thus, through each customer, who agrees to follow the practice, the bank saves Rs.40. Taking a cue from SBI, HDFC Securities too is looking at pruning costs sending a welcome kit for every new broking account through mail, instead of courier. The brokerage firm can make a monthly saving of six lakh rupees by following this practice.
Other broking firms are e-mailing contract notes with the consent of their clients, instead of printing and couriering it, saving Rs.20 per contract. Typically, large brokerage houses dispatch a minimum of 5,000 such contracts on any trading day. Another instance is cutting on colored printouts by a foreign investment bank, which used to take 1,000 such everyday, but has now brought it down to 100. This allows it to save Rs.12 lakh annually.

- Condensed from Silicon India’s SI Dailydose [dailydose@sidailydose.com]