In light of today’s era of inflation and a possible recession just on the horizon, now is the ideal time to seek out ways to optimize your business’s processes as a way to cut down on costs. This doesn’t mean undertaking a complete overhaul of your company’s operations — by making even small adjustments to your whole supply chain, you can lower operating expenses and amplify monthly profits and overall growth.

Following are some small-but-impactful supply chain improvements that can greatly increase monthly profits.

Update your website’s product pages. It can be so easy to put website updates on the back burner. However, your business’s website is usually the first place that potential customers go when they want to learn more about your products. So put yourself in the shoes of a website visitor and look at your product pages to find areas that cause confusion or are lacking in essential information. For example, did you forget to include a how-to manual for one of your products? This could lead to time-wasting customer service calls and e-mails. Or, would your website benefit from video tutorials on product pages? Taking the time to film and upload them could eliminate a ton of customer inquiries later on.

Fix bottlenecks in customer service processes. From answering calls from customers to responding to inquiries via e-mail, a disorganized customer service process can lead to wasted time. So take a long look at all of your customer service processes and put together a list of all the inefficiencies and bottlenecks. For example, do your customer service agents frequently have to ask team members how to answer inquiries? This causes wasted time for both the customer service agent and those they ask questions to. It could be fixed by having a thorough internal knowledge base containing e-mail templates and phone scripts for answering questions.

On top of this, do customers frequently call in and ask the same questions about certain products? Then it might be time to update your website’s FAQ page. You can also cut back on customer service agents (and save a ton of money by not having to pay those additional salaries) by implementing the use of a customer service bot on your website that can answer general questions. These bots can answer questions related to product usage and specifications, when sold-out items will be in stock again, special discounts, whether orders can be shipped to certain countries, and more.

Eliminate wasted manpower in processes. Having multiple people working in one process in the supply chain when one person would do just fine only leads to wasted manpower and increased payroll expenses. For example, do you have multiple people facilitating order shipments? There could be a lot of time-wasting back-and-forth communication between them as they try to clarify which orders have been taken care of, or reach out to the same customer to verify information. So why not see if one person can handle all of the order shipments?

Or, do you have one or more people checking in with customers after their orders arrive? This use of manpower and associated payroll expenses could be eradicated just by using a customer relationship management (CRM) tool that sends out automated e-mail check-ins to customers. So take a look at all of your processes in the supply chain, from ordering raw materials to manufacturing products, to shipping and customer service, to find manpower that can be eliminated or used in another department.

Nathan Liao is the founder of CMA Exam Academy, a certified management accountant exam review program.