Hidden Profits Blog

Finding the Gold in Your Business

Hidden Profits Author:

Lynda J. Roth

As the president and founding partner of Woodland Hills-based LJR Consulting Services, Lynda advises clients on ways to improve profitability and productivity through both technology and business processes. She also works with companies and private equity firms on the role of information technology in mergers and acquisitions.



Register for


LJR Consulting Services

Email Me

The Corporate Crash Diet – when reducing cost and laying off staff becomes unstainable

Filed under: business process,finance department,Information Technology,lean accounting,Uncategorized — Lynda Roth at 10:35 am on Tuesday, June 1, 2010

Have you gone on a corporate crash diet in the last couple of years.  After the binging in the early 2000’s and the financial collapse in 2008, many companies felt it necessary to put themselves on a crash spending diet.  So what do I mean by that.  They did one or more of the following;

  • Reduced staff corporate- wide by 10%, 15%, 20%
  • Halted all spending on marketing, training etc.
  • Halted all capital spending on improvements, acquisitions, product development

So now it is almost 2 years later and the problems from these actions are starting to be felt.  These actions were taken to preserve the company but now the results may very well have put the company on an unsustainable path. Why does this seemingly correct response become unsustainable.  Frequently this creates a downward spiral in which

  • Customers become unhappy because service suffers
  • Employees become unhappy because of increased workloads and overtime
  • Productivity suffers because of increased workloads
  • Sales suffer because of lack of marketing and the above results of downsizing

Or the second scenario is that the company weathers the storm and sales come back company starts to grow and now they begin hiring again because they are short handed.  The end of this scenario is that they have brought all the cost back that was shed and now they are vulnerable to the next downturn.

A better approach and one that will lead to sustained improvement is to evaluate all business process and systems.  Determine where there is waste and inefficiency and quantify the impact to profit and cash flow of eliminating or reducing the waste and inefficiency.  Often by identifying and implementing these sorts of targeted cost reducing strategies not only are the costs in the business reduced to be in line with the economic conditions, but the company becomes stronger and more competitive.