Manufacturing: Cutting your current costs

The Australian manufacturing industry landscape is regularly changing. Currently, businesses are grappling with high running costs, rising labour and energy costs, energy policy uncertainty; all major factors that can impact your bottom line and your success within a highly competitive, global market.

As business owners and managers, you are forced to keep up with being innovative and adaptable, to secure your business and to ensure its viability over the short and long-term. There will always be threats to your business, unfortunately there are some things you can’t control. As a SEMMA member, you can be assured that your association is doing everything possible to influence the larger and high impact running costs of your business. Their valuable lobbying towards electricity companies, and involving relevant councils and local government, provides you with a level of comfort that you are not alone and that and that SEMMA is supporting you, and the future of your business.

If we shift our focus to the smaller costs that can provide an immediate impact to your bottom line, you may be able to regain some of your expense control. Let’s talk about the 3 C’s. Cutting current costs can have an immediate, positive impact on your bottom line whilst also letting you gain greater control of your business and ensuring its long-term sustainability. But where to start? There are smaller costs that you can review, to ensure you are only spending what you need to. Think about the following areas within your business:

Computer security and program maintenance. Are you paying someone to monitor your computer security? Security monitoring, finding the right antivirus and security software and protecting your privacy are all things that businesses need to consider, especially with cyber-crime at an all-time high in Australia.

Do you engage in website SEO, and other ways to get your business noticed? Are your advertising costs effective and reaching the right audience? There may be things you could be doing differently and more effectively, with less effort and less expenditure.

Consider your employees and current benefits payable. Are you getting them the best deal for their life cover, income protection and other insurances? What if you switched to a group cover instead of individual covers? Buying cover in bulk for organisations can help reduce the costs of insurance, whilst ensuring you are taking care of your people.

And what about your business insurance program? Do you monitor your insurances as your business grows and evolves? Do you make changes to your insurance cover throughout your policy period, as your business situation changes?

A major area of expenditure for businesses is Workers Compensation Insurance. You are required to have this by law and need to ensure you remain compliant. Keeping up with ever changing rules and regulations can be time consuming and stressful. You can have your Workers Compensation reviewed to ensure you are paying the right amount. A review can provide you with peace of mind knowing that you are providing your employees with adequate cover, whilst also protecting one of your biggest assets, your business. Furthermore, you may have matters brought to your attention that otherwise would have gone unnoticed; like paying too much, or being classified incorrectly, resulting in years of over payments that you would never get back if you didn’t have a review conducted.

It’s all about understanding your industry and your business, and examining how your policies and premiums are structured to find those opportunities to cut current costs. At AB Phillips, we have the experience, technical knowledge and resources to assist you to do just that. We work closely with SEMMA and understand your specific needs, which helps us, help you.

As part of our ongoing commitment to SEMMA members, AB Phillips offers a complimentary Workers Compensation Premium Analysis to help get you started with cutting your current costs. We review your Workers Comp policies, compliance and payments to confirm you are adequately covered and also classified appropriately to ensure correct premiums and no over-payments. We offer this to you at no cost, and if we find a problem and obtain a refund, we simply take a portion of the refund as a fee. No problems found, no fee!

Recently, we supported a client with approximately 70 staff in the manufacturing industry who had a Workers Compensation Insurance premium of $777k p.a. and 15 open claims prior to working with AB Phillips. After just 12 months of working with our team, they managed to reduce their Workers Compensation Insurance premium to $476k p.a. and reduce their open and ongoing claims down to just 3.

The additional money saved enabled our customer to spend on growing and developing their business. Savings such as these could also provide a buffer for future cost increases that may be out of your control.

At AB Phillips, we’re not just Insurance brokers. That means we take a holistic view of your entire business to make sure you are saving in all aspects.

Here’s how it works:

Review: We conduct a thorough analysis of your business to determine risks and exposures, what you need to insure and what level of cover is appropriate.
Assessment: Based on our review, we will negotiate a specific insurance program that will give you the protection you need at the best possible price. Our broad network enables us to negotiate exclusive arrangements with underwriters that often can’t be obtained anywhere else.
Recommendation: We will prepare a detailed insurance program recommendation and quote for your review. We will also discuss any other areas of our business that may be relevant and provide you with a service your business requires or should consider.
Implementation: We will work with you to refine the proposal and implement the insurance program and any other service you have decided to implement.
Ongoing advice and support: We will conduct annual reviews of your program to ensure it continues to meet your business’ evolving needs. We will assist with the management of any claims, by acting as your advocate to get the best possible outcome. We also touch base throughout the year, to ensure that if anything has changed we can add / deduct these things from your insurance program – ensuring you only pay for what you need.

There will always be external, and internal, contributing factors to costs associated in managing a business. You may not be able to juggle and compare the costs given your busy role and environment, so leave some of the work to AB Phillips. We have years of experience and industry insight and are happy to talk to you about your individual situation. We know that every business is different, so let’s talk about how we can help yours.