Plucking "Low Hanging Fruit" Saving? Hardwork Needed

Before embarking any "low hanging fruit" saving program, it is important to carry out the following ground work to ensure the success,

Alignment with Senior Management
Many of times, Senior Management might have “secret” not revealed to working level. Before embarking on the low hanging fruit program, it is good to share the programs with senior management and get alignment so that we will not work towards something which does not fit into the big picture of organization or synchronized to the objective of corporate level.

Collaboration with Stakeholders
It is always advisable to rope in stakeholder so that they feel they are part of the program. Get their inputs, listen to the voice and fine tune the program to alleviate whatever potholes that might seems detrimental to the success of the program. With the stakeholders contributed more to the program, they will have vested interest to make the program a triumph. On the contrary, if they are not included as part of insider initially, they might tend to withdraw themselves from the program and might even gloat at the failure of the program.

Standardization
Whenever possible, review the specifications of the service or products categories. Is there any opportunity to standardize the parts/services? By using standardized parts, suppliers will be able to realize economy of scale and hence providing volume discount to us.

Updated Specification
Specification changed, technology evolved, it is prudent to clarify the specification with the end user whether it is still up to date. It will be very unfortunate to find out the specification is no longer relevant after investing tons of effort on the program.

Requirement Establishment
When collaborating with stakeholders, find out the demands of the products or services that we are trying to have saving. What quantity is needed? What kind of quality the category is supposed to meet? What service level is expected? Any Customer Requested Date(CRD) target to achieve?

Baseline Establishment
Start with the end result in mind. Many of the times, senior management will ask for the cost reduction plan for the coming year. It is advisable to establish the baseline so that everyone can have a clear goal and target of what to shoot for.  It will serve as proposal to show senior management how much the company can gain from the program by investing on the time and effort on it.  At the same time, stakeholders will be motivated to put in time and effort if they can have a clear destination of what to be achieved.