Filling a gap: what is the purpose of your business?

A sense of purpose is what every individual and business chart their path as to where they want to go. Without it, it’s like losing one’s direction in the journey. Businesses thrive because they provide a solution to a problem or responds to a certain demand in society. Many enterprises were established because the founder has experienced or witnessed a particular need that has to be filled in.

If you are planning to start a business or if you have one and want to revisit your mission and vision, it is essential to identify the purpose of your business. What is the gap that your product or service trying to fill in? Still in the process of figuring out the solution that your business must provide? You might find some inspiration or insights from the experience shares by these entrepreneurs.

Austin Vaughan

Managing Director, Pacific Solar

We fill the requirement for commercial solar installations. Nationally, most companies now consider a Solar Energy System as an essential item to convey their corporate environmental credentials, as well as an energy cost savings from the bottom line. We offer an end-to-end solution to ensure our customers have a seamless delivery process to achieve the environmental and return-on-investment outcomes they aspire towards.

Joanne Camilleri

General Manager, Telco Business Solutions Group

Co-Founder, Work Tank

In 2018, my business partner John Rovas identified a gap for high-quality coworking & shared office spaces in the suburbs of Melbourne. We were often travelling to the CBD to conduct off-site meetings and connect with colleagues or suppliers. We started to talk about how great it would be to have something like this locally (our businesses were based in North West Melbourne). 

We continued to build out the concept of what we would like to see in our coworking space, and construction commenced in August 2019. We planned for everything – except a pandemic! We were scheduled to open in March 2020 but Work Tank was officially opened in June 2020.  We are proud to say that one year on, we are building our community and whilst the impacts of COVID have been challenging, we have seen some benefits coming from it, also with people wanting to work closer to home.

Dion Castle

CEO, Struber

With the fast-changing environment in society and the world, in general, it is easy to see that the culture, technology and customer experience in our industry were due for an upgrade.

Data-full decision-making drives our thoughtful mix of communication, engagement, marketing and creative solutions, forging strong human connections one major project at a time. With our eyes firmly on the prize, we build bold engagement programs, working hard to deliver greatness for our clients every day. And it’s this greatness we’re most proud of. It’s what’s earned us the respect of people in the Struber universe – our clients, our peers and each other.

Cameron Bell

CEO, Pyrochar

Oh wow, I see more and more as I become more experienced. Right now, I am focusing on two, which are (very briefly) disability housing and scale capital for globally expanding ventures.

But I've honed it down to two main areas:

• Painkiller - is what you are solving a real pain or problem for a consumer?

• Vitamins - Is what you are solving a more interesting or easier way of doing something?

The data shows that neither is more likely to be successful than the other, which is very interesting. There are just so many new businesses to be created that easily fit into those above two categories.

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If you just look around you or pay attention to the day-to-day things you do, you will find that there are gaps, hurdles and obstacles that people need to overcome. However, every challenge and problem presents an opportunity – the opportunity to make things better, to provide a solution, and to make people’s lives easier. And that’s what visionaries see. They don’t see the huge rock in front of them as a reason to turn back and give up. Instead, it’s a way for them to jump higher or build something to surpass that wall that prevents them from going forward.

Share with us your experience. What is the gap you’ve seen that inspired you to start your business?

Budget-saving tips for more cost-efficient work operations

In business, it is important to track what’s being used, including cash, goods and, of course, time.

Keeping up with your day-to-day operations may quite be a handful, but with a few tips, you may just be able to have a more cost-efficient day-to-day operation in your workplace.

We gathered some amazing ideas from entrepreneurs on how they budget their resources, lower their spending, and save money, time, and effort.

Go paperless

The use of less or no paper at work is an earth-friendly initiative and also a great way of saving on costs. Besides, using paper a lot can take up so much space in your office. For Dion Castle, CEO of Struber, their way of doing this is to “make it really hard to print.” He added, “When your team stays digital, you save the planet and save on printing costs at the same time.”

Monitor expenditures

One way to stay on budget is to constantly keep your eye on your spending. Alliance Software Founder and CEO Ben Stickland shared how to do this. “Set a time (for us, it's every 6 months) to review all recurring expenditures and challenge whether you need them or perhaps need them at the level you use them. It only takes 10 mins and saves money on subscriptions that were good ideas but didn't get used,” he remarked.

Gather data and purchase correctly

When purchases are done in bulk and large quantities, keeping track of spending might be challenging. However, with the current technology, it can be done fast, accurately and effectively. “With all our larger commercial solar projects, there are bulk materials to be procured, so purchasing correctly is the key to cost-efficient & profitable operation. Also, utilising streamlined operational systems and apps to efficiently capture details from all parties involved reduces admin hours considerably. This presents a very professional outcome that is appreciated by the end customers,” explained Austin Vaughan, Managing Director at Pacific Solar.

Put systems and have business rhythms

Being cost-efficient is about keeping track of money spent as well as the amount of time spent on the kind of work that has to be done. Putting a system in place and coming up with a regular business rhythm can save a lot of time, effort and resources. This is what Malcolm Bean, Director at Beanmkrgy, and his team have been doing in their organisation. "We come up with simple systems as much as possible and agree on daily or weekly rhythms for meetings and planning wherein we stick to start and finish times. The more we are aligned and adhere to business rhythms, the more we multiply productivity. So, most of our focus is productivity, which is getting more out of each hour as opposed to cost savings,” he stated.

Think of various strategies that may be applied to your business

Look closely at how you do things and get your team to brainstorm and come up with strategies that will help you manage your cost more effectively. Moreover, be sure that these strategies are executed in your business. Rahul Kale, Director at Sunpower Renewables, revealed what they’ve done within their business.

According to Rahul, “We went through an exercise to identify the top 2-3 operational cost drivers and implemented a proper strategy to manage these costs. We also ran an internal competition within the organization and the person with the best idea to save costs over a period was rewarded. This strategy was well communicated and shared within the organization. It is important to get everyone’s buy-in to make this a success. We try to do it as much in-house as possible to save costs, and as of late, the simpler things seem to be helping us save a lot:

• Being more energy-efficient by turning off the computers and lights before we leave;

• Calling our suppliers and asking for discounts if we buy in bulk (important to have good inventory control and line-of-sight on future orders to do this);

• Replacing paper-printing marketing material with digital and online material;

• Utilising technology and VC tools to reduce commuting and travelling costs;

• Doing a barter system with businesses in the area. We specifically worked with a data & AI business that we have helped go energy-efficient, and they returned the benefits via reduced bills as their energy costs have plummeted.”

Automate

Taking advantage of technology and, at the same time, making less use of physical resources is one way of lowering costs. This is why Cameron Bell, CEO at Pyrochar, utilise available software to his business’ advantage.

“I think people really overpay and underuse software. Many businesses (including my own) still rely very heavily on human input for certain tasks and requirements that could become automated with the right level of skill. My secret weapon is Zapier, which is used to automate as many things as possible. While I do currently automate a fair amount, I know I could do it more with greater skill in that area which would allow for: a.) lower staff costs or b.) a reallocation of staff capital to revenue-generating processes that need human input,” he shared.

These are just a few things that you might be able to apply to your own business as well, but there are still more best practices and suggestions out there on how you can manage your resources well. Now, if you have an office budget-saving tip, we would be happy to hear them. Share your tips below in the comment section.