By The Forbes Finance Council featuring JC Abusaid, CEO/President
In uncertain markets, controlling costs, boosting efficiency and increasing profitability all take on even greater importance. Leaders must balance their organization’s short-term needs with long-term goals, all while staying agile in the face of constant change.
Below, 19 Forbes Finance Council members share expert tips for managing costs in unpredictable markets. From developing strategic partnerships to practicing “reverse budgeting,” these strategies can help any organization meet these challenges head-on and ensure lasting success.
1. Value Employees To Reduce Turnover
In uncertain markets, I believe valuing employees and building their skills is key to controlling costs and staying resilient. Recognizing hard work, offering growth opportunities and listening to ideas keeps teams motivated and reduces turnover costs. Effective training helps employees adapt, work smarter and avoid waste, ensuring the business remains efficient and prepared for challenges. – Gary Galstyan, Rockwell Capital Group
2. Automate And Streamline Tasks
In uncertain markets, leaders can control costs with automation, streamlining tasks and reducing manual labor. Salesforce’s Agentforce, for example, automates customer interactions, cutting costs, improving service and maintaining flexibility. Automation also lets employees focus on higher-value tasks. – Brian Dunhill, DF-direct
3. Adopt Agile And Lean Methodologies
Leaders should adopt agile financial planning and lean operations to control costs, increase efficiency and ensure profitability in uncertain markets. This includes real-time analytics, streamlining processes, scenario planning and customer-centric adjustments. This strategy ensures resilience and adaptability while maintaining profitability. – Mahdi Yazdizadeh, Ereele Capital
4. Seek Employee Insights On Processes
Focus on continuous improvement. Leaders should foster a culture of innovation and encourage employees to suggest process improvements. – Tanmay Gupta, Tanmay Gupta
5. Adopt Efficient Operations And Strategic Pricing
There are several key areas leaders should adopt: efficient operations, economies of scale, tight cost controls, strategic pricing and continuous improvement (Kaizen). – Anatoly Iofe, IceBridge Financial Group, LLC
6. Develop Strategic Partnerships
As a CFO, I recommend focusing on resource optimization and strategic partnerships. Maximizing the use of existing personnel, streamlining operations and reallocating resources to high-impact programs control costs and improve efficiency. Partnerships with public, private and educational institutions help share resources and reduce risks, ensuring sustainability in uncertain markets. – Xinkai Kevin Hu, CPA, UA3 Inc.
7. Adjust Your Sales Strategy Based On The Market
Go back to your business plan and look for ways to revamp your sales strategy to keep pace with the realities of the market. At the end of the day, by continuing to bring in sales, you’ll have the resources to focus on the other areas that will need to be tweaked. – Manuel A Vidal, Premium Finance Group
8. Go Back To The Basics Of Capital Efficiency
Leaders navigating uncertain markets must return to the fundamentals of capital efficiency. This means scrutinizing expenses to ensure they drive measurable value, prioritizing sustainable growth initiatives that generate consistent returns and leveraging customer revenue to fund operations. Exercising financial discipline includes preserving cash and remaining focused on profitability. – Sean Cantwell, Volition Capital
9. Identify Your Financial Boundaries
Know where your boundaries are. It’s hard to run a business efficiently if you don’t know the basics like your cash burn rate, debt-to-income ratio, benefits increases and more. The only thing more important than selling your product is accounting for the impact of the sale, or lack thereof. If you track these factors closely and plan for them, it enables you to seek new opportunities in the market. – Lee Henderson, EY
10. Delegate Goals And Strategy
Prioritize clear, transparent communication and delegation of goals, objectives and strategy to each employee in a way that they know they are trusted to perform and they, in turn, take ownership of results. When each person takes ownership of their part in ensuring costs are controlled and efficiency is increased, profitability is achievable in just about any market condition. – Shannon Power, Scope AR
11. Leverage AI And Information Management
Implement a total experience strategy that leverages AI and information management to streamline operations, automate manual processes and create unified customer and employee experiences. By breaking down data silos, financial services can reduce operational costs, enhance decision-making and deliver personalized services that drive efficiency and profitability in volatile markets. – Monica Hovsepian, OpenText
12. Combine Continuous Improvement Principles And Data-Driven Insights
Leaders can enhance profitability in uncertain markets by fostering a culture of continuous improvement. Encourage employees to identify inefficiencies and propose solutions, creating a collective effort toward cost reduction. Combine this with leveraging data-driven insights and automation to streamline operations and focus resources on high-impact areas, ensuring growth and operational resilience. – Anushree Jain, Titan
13. Embrace Digital Tools And Sustainable Offerings
Leaders should embrace digital-first solutions like self-service tools to cut costs and enhance customer experiences. A disciplined approach to cost control—optimizing resources, renegotiating contracts and automating tasks—ensures resilience. Sustainable, innovative products and strategic investments drive long-term growth in uncertain markets. – Shivali Kukreja , NIB NZ
14. Practice ‘Reverse Budgeting’
A great way to ensure profitability is to implement a “reverse budgeting” approach: Start with your desired profit margin and work backward, allocating costs only to high-impact, revenue-driving activities. This forces a focus on ROI, eliminates waste and ensures every dollar spent aligns with profitability goals. Pair this with quarterly scenario planning to stay agile in changing markets. – Trixy Castro, TRX Capital
15. Use Financial Modeling And Predictive Tax Planning
Leverage predictive tax planning alongside robust financial modeling. By proactively identifying tax implications of business decisions and market shifts, companies can optimize their tax positions while improving cash flow. This strategy not only reduces effective tax rates but creates operational efficiencies through better timing of expenses, investments and revenue recognition. – Terry Lamb, TLAMB INC
16. Prioritize Investments With Strong ROI
Leaders should focus on data-driven decision-making, prioritizing investments with clear ROI while cutting non-essential expenses. Implement process automation to increase efficiency and reduce manual errors. Regularly review financial metrics to adapt quickly to market changes, ensuring a balance between cost control and growth opportunities. – Lawrence Pross, Nexi
17. Develop Flexible, Streamlined Processes
Prioritize operational agility through flexible business processes that can quickly adapt to changing market conditions, customer demands and external challenges. Leaders can streamline decision-making by empowering teams to make quicker, data-driven choices and implement lean practices to eliminate waste and improve workflows. – Parijat Banerjee, LatentView Analytics
18. Implement Demand Forecasting
Effective demand forecasting is critical. It helps to reduce inventory overhang in uncertain markets (or in the case of people-intensive businesses reducing over-hiring). – Sachith Sebastian, BeyondTeq Ventures
19. Identify Discretionary Versus Critical Expenses
You should understand your financials completely so you know which expenses are discretionary and which are not. In tough markets or cycles, you then know what can be trimmed immediately without a major impact on the core business. Knowing how many months of operating expenses are covered by your working capital is also key. This is critical in deep or intense crises. – John Abusaid, Halbert Hargrove
