Consolidation in business is commonly used to refer to the process of two or more companies coming together to form one larger entity. The reason this happens so often is because a consolidated business entity typically has greater influence among customers and often operates at a lower level of competition; which improves margins and thus operating results.
For example, when Facebook acquired social media properties like Instagram and WhatsApp, the company not only hedged its bet on these fast-growing properties, but also consolidated its position against advertisers for the lucrative social media real estate advertising space. But this is not the only way to consolidate. Companies can pursue many productivity improvements by consolidating every part of their operations.
Here are a few examples of how this can be achieved.
Consolidating processes
The biggest time waster in any business activity is the lack of coordination between different members performing similar activities. In most cases, the loss of productivity is greater for repeatable and mundane actions. Take the case of a simple activity such as sharing your blog posts across different social media profiles. In most cases, this activity is repeatable and involves loss of productivity due to having to log in and out of different social media accounts. Automating these tasks can reduce task repeatability and significantly improve productivity. You can also automate your email and other aspects of your marketing efforts in the same way.
In other cases, productivity losses occur due to the lack of joint coordination between the different teams that produce and publish advertising materials. One study found that a small social media agency could save more than 30 hours every month by consolidating all of these processes under one social media application. This allows companies to focus on higher value-added tasks that in turn improve the organization’s profitability.
Consolidating instruments
Setting up your office infrastructure can add up to a lot of overhead that needs to be continually scaled up, especially in the early years of your business. This can significantly reduce your profitability, as adding and removing infrastructure tools can be expensive. Consolidating these tools and applications can be critical to reducing overhead and increasing profitability.
One way to consolidate these costs is by moving to the cloud. Cloud telephony and unified communications tools allow companies to conduct all kinds of real-time and non-real-time communications through a single platform. Plus, because everything is in the cloud, it’s easy to scale up or down as demand changes.
In addition to consolidating your physical infrastructure, it also makes sense to look at consolidating your software apps and applications. This is especially useful if you have a distributed workforce that works across markets. Consolidating your documents and spreadsheets from these different markets gives you a bird’s-eye view of your activities, which is important for having strategic business conversations. Consolidating your infrastructure and apps also has other benefits, such as enabling seamless analytics and automation for your sales and marketing teams. This helps teams further optimize their communication strategies, leading to further profitability.
Consolidation of your marketing strategy
This is perhaps one of the most overlooked aspects of business consolidation. While it is very common in large companies with separate teams handling different aspects of marketing such as ATL, BTL, digital media and the like, it is not uncommon in small companies either. Companies tend to run different campaigns on different platforms, with the underlying assumption that campaigns that work in one medium may not work in another. For example, businesses can create an explainer video for their business that is promoted solely from the landing page and are not allowed to exploit the content they have created on other channels, such as their Instagram page or Facebook page.
However, consolidating your campaigns gives you two clear benefits. First, it allows you to formulate core marketing objectives that can then be driven through campaigns on different platforms. This strategy also allows you to measure your results more definitively. Running multiple campaigns across different mediums can confuse visitors and prevent them from effectively absorbing your marketing message.
External consolidation factors
While the strategies mentioned above primarily discuss methods to consolidate from within the organization, there are other factors that are externally driven and can drive improvements in business productivity. In Britain, for example, there is a concerted move towards consolidating taxes on small businesses with a turnover of less than £1 million. The aim is to simplify tax processes and make them more taxpayer-friendly.
The demand for consolidating tax payments is so high that according to one survey, more than a quarter of small business owners expressed an interest in switching to the Simple Consolidated Tax (SCT) regime, even if it meant paying more tax would pay now. What companies lose in tax revenue could be more than offset by the efficiency gains achieved by switching to a simpler tax regime.
Conclusion
Consolidating business processes and tools plays a major role in making operations more streamlined and efficient. Is there a consolidation element we missed in this article? Share your thoughts in the comments.