Businesses in the UK waste 5.2% of revenue each year due to poor cost management, according to a survey by the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA).
The survey was conducted to inform CIMA’s Cost Transformation Model – a planning and control framework for transforming and managing a business’s cost-competitiveness.
In 2015, the total amount wasted was estimated at £194 billion.
Cancelled projects, overpayment, unnecessary purchases were all quoted as causal.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the banking sector was found to be the most profligate; 38% of poll respondents said there was very little adherence to cost-saving in their organisation.
Half of the respondents said their organisations had no specific strategy in place to drive cost-competitiveness, whilst 81% of those polled said that promoting a cost-conscious culture was the executive team’s responsibility, just 13% said the responsibility rested with the finance department.
Making employees accountable and providing them with incentives to improve cost management is an important step that many companies have yet to take.