Running a business in Australia isn’t for the faint-hearted. Between rising costs, patchy supply chains, and a talent pool that’s stretched thinner than a tradie’s patience on a Friday arvo, there’s pressure from all sides to do more with less.
Most of us have already squeezed the obvious savings—energy audits, remote work policies, bulk buying bog rolls. Now it’s about finding niche methods. The slightly off-centre ones that the big consultancies don’t put on the brochure.
Here are six methods we’ve seen Aussie companies using to quietly but meaningfully sharpen their efficiency game.
1. Outsource construction estimates
There’s nothing romantic about take-offs, tenders and tabulating quantities—but getting it wrong can gut your margins. Outsourced construction estimating services is a strategy that a growing number of construction firms, especially the smaller and mid-tier ones, are using to streamline costs. These savvy operators have decided to stop treating estimating like a sacred in-house ritual. Instead, they now delegate the job to specialists who live and breathe rates, scopes and specs.
The benefit? You free up your team to actually build things, instead of chasing prices and second-guessing spreadsheets. You also reduce overheads tied up in underutilised staff between jobs. And, frankly, the quality from some of the offshore estimating firms is better than many expect. They’re fast, focused, and far less likely to round up quantities just because it’s 4:45pm on a Thursday.
2. Turning unused space into micro-warehousing
Got a bit of shed, showroom or back-of-house space sitting idle? Don’t let it gather dust or unused inventory. A growing number of companies are subleasing slivers of storage to local e-commerce businesses. Think short-term, small-footprint warehousing.
It’s not exactly a gold mine, but it offsets rent and utilities, plus it’s the sort of symbiotic arrangement that helps small operations support each other. Not to mention, it forces you to tidy up and stop hoarding obsolete brochures from 2009.
3. Investing in digital twins (just the useful bits)
Digital twins sound expensive and over-engineered, like something dreamed up in a boardroom full of consultants with a love for acronyms. But a stripped-back version can make sense, especially for manufacturers or anyone managing complex assets.
We’ve seen businesses model just one or two critical workflows: a production line, a mechanical system, and then tweak performance in the simulation before touching the real-world equipment. It’s like testing your backup generator in a video game before actually flipping the switch. If you skip the bells, whistles and dashboard bloat, the ROI turns up faster than a plumber when there’s overtime.
4. Micro-training instead of macro-courses
You don’t need to send Barry from dispatch to a three-day course in the city just to teach him how to use the new logistics software. It’s expensive, disruptive, and usually involves sandwiches that taste like foam.
Short, targeted training modules, delivered via mobile or short bursts of face-to-face time, achieve the same outcome without the fuss. A 20-minute video on barcode scanning. A five-question quiz to reinforce inventory logic. Bite-sized beats bloated, every time.
5. Swapping software subscriptions for open-source alternatives
Subscriptions are the new death by a thousand cuts. What starts as $20 a month across three departments becomes a few grand a year across the business. Many companies are now switching to open-source platforms for core tools—accounting, CRM, and even inventory.
Sure, there’s a bit more setup involved. However, with a decent tech partner (or a slightly obsessive internal IT person), the result is a more stable system that you fully own and can scale without the sting of rising licence fees. Think LibreOffice instead of Office365. Odoo instead of NetSuite. It won’t be glamorous, but it’ll work—and it won’t quietly ratchet up its price every July.
6. Cross-skilling through secondment, not redundancy
Redundancy is the nuclear option. It trims costs, yes, but it also strips knowledge and culture like paint from a pressure washer. Some firms are taking a different path: cross-skilling staff by moving them across departments on temporary secondments.
The bloke from sales who understands the quoting process gets embedded with ops. The admin assistant with a knack for numbers supports the finance team three days a week. You end up with a more flexible workforce and less reliance on any one role or person. It’s not about doing more with fewer people. It’s about doing more with the same people who now know more.
Efficiency gains don’t always come from fancy tools or seismic strategy shifts. Often, it’s a series of quiet, deliberate changes. Swapping a bloated estimating team for external specialists. Monetising your spare racking space. Using your people, places and processes more cleverly.
It’s not about chasing perfection. It’s about trimming the fat without losing the muscle. In a business climate that feels like it’s always 38 degrees with no breeze, that sort of pragmatic, incremental efficiency is what keeps the lights on—and the books in the black.
