The audacity of cost-cutting

Today I’m writing you from our New York office, this stop during our annual is actually significant since we merged last year our Boston unit with our NY unit to create the NorthEast unit. Boston actually manages NY and folks here are sometimes taking it personal.

The fact that I stated that I’m a Red Sox fan didn’t help. I should be more cautious next time.

Everywhere I go during the annual tour I am giving our business unit leader an evaluation of their effort to minimize non-billable expenses. In theory, any expense should be billable. Sadly, CGI needs to sometimes pay for things that don’t get charged to a project. It’s like common cold, syphilis or mid-life crisis, you do your best to avoid it but sometimes you wake up one morning with it.

I give my BU leaders a note ranging from 1.0 (you’re a high-maintenance office, like dude is there a masseuse on your staff?) to 5.0 (you are a CGI role model, you manage pennies and there’s a framed picture of Scrooge McDuck on your desk – a picture that you paid with your personal money of course). Most business units range from 3.7 to 4.2, but this year one office managed to rank 4.32 which is a company record.

So the during the annual tour it’s natural for BU leaders to ask me for guidance when it comes to implement a cost-cutting culture inside their organization. I was walking on the 7^th floor of our Hanover office yesterday and I saw an employee using a coffee machine. He used no coins to operate the coffee machine. So I asked one of the VP, like what’s going on here, employees are getting a free cup of joe whenever they want? Free milk too? Jesus-Christ do you have any freaking idea of what you’re doing here?

The now blushing VP told me that this was a small perk that didn't cost much, and they managed to buy the cheapest brand with an additional discount. So I wacked the guy with my umbrella in front of his lieutenants, telling him that from now on employees must pay for coffee. By doing so, you transform something that costs you money into something on which you make a profit. If a cup costs $0.22 to brew, charge $0.75 and advertise that CGI is now using a premium brand. Switch to another cheap coffee brand manufactured in China and put an environment spin to the story.

If all my 26,000 employees are drinking one free cup of coffee each day, that’s $5720 per day worldwide! Start charging for the acrid beverage, and you’re now putting $13780 per day into CGI’s pocket. That’s over $2.7M in net profit a year!

If you’re even smarter, you stop buying milk and sugar. People will drink it black or they will bring CoffeeMate from home.

As a token gift, I am giving all my business unit leaders a pocket calculator with the CGI logo on it (another non-billable expense, sigh). Start using it today.