Cost savings may top the list of executive concerns, but there are three value-adding components that follow closely behind. Efforts to save money are common across Media departments, with the debate often centered around how video and communications enhance a company’s core business, and how accessible production tools have become. With new discussions of pending financial forecasts, free-flow spending is very rare in today’s economic landscape, as companies of all shapes and sizes face pressure to do more with less. Media and AV leaders are using data to develop creative cost-savings methods, while still producing quality messages and events.

cost savings tops their list of business concerns in 2016.

Keeping a close eye on spending is an integral part of most successful creative media & AV organizations, as this leads to ability to recover costs, develop competitive internal pricing for company stakeholders and increased ROI. At the same time, though, organizations must also prioritize innovation and production of top-quality deliverables.

This is reflected by our survey results, as many of the media and AV leaders we heard from have their eyes on maintaining a forward-thinking, customer-focused, efficient operation. Following closely behind cost savings, executives said their three next areas of focus for this year are centered on adding value to their organization:

1. Business process improvements – these can be varied, but are most focused on implementing software tools, cutting down on inefficiencies, redundancies and bottlenecks that affect productivity.
2. Customer engagement – making the extra effort with clients to consult, meet their needs and help drive their business forward is key.
3. Revenue growth – keeping internal dollars in-house and expanding relationships to provide more services.

While achieving all of these goals media and AV leaders must use their creative skills to their advantage, and consider a variety of strategies that help keep costs low while growing the business.

A combination of numerous different cost-cutting tactics, across departments can work together to cut hard costs:

1. With many organizations doing a bulk of work with mid-level production budgets, consider using in-house staff first before hiring externally.
2. Cross-training internal staff to handle projects from start to finish is common
3. Taking advantage of User Generated Video (UGV) and incorporating it into a finished piece saves costs on capturing content.
4. Utilizing streamlined technology such as drone cameras or Go Pros for small and mid-budget videos reduce the need for expensive dollies and jibs and the labor associated with them.
5. Evaluating quarterly spend to identify labor categories and when it makes financial sense to either convert freelancers to full time, or hire freelancers for peak periods and not commit to annual overhead.

Leveraging talent, staying on the bleeding edge of technology and monitoring metrics will help media and AV leaders strike a balance to ensure they’re being as cost efficient as possible, while keeping growth and innovation at the top of their to-do list.