Article BECI

Bridgewater cuts in the general expenses

Article about Bridgewater in Entreprendre, the magazine of BECI, the Brussels chamber of Commerce and Industry.

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To reduce general expenses by 10 to 30% is the challenge of Bridgewater. This young company works on the consumption habits...

Is it the right time to reduce your insurance costs?

The following text is part of an insurance special of Forward, the magazine of FEB, the Belgian association of enterprises.

Forward FR

Florent Hainaut is the CEO and founder of Bridgewater, a start-up which helps its clients with the management and reduction of their general expenses. In cooperation with a specialized insurance broker, Marsh, the company realizes complete audits. He points out several possible sources of savings within an insurance portfolio, mainly, the possibility to work with a broker which negotiates important volumes, to obtain more interesting tariffs: “We work with a broker which proposes the best negotiated offer to the client. However, the client always keeps the liberty to choose. Nothing obliges him to work with our partner. In fact, between insurance brokers who only want one final negotiated offer, some sort of principle of transportability of the best offer exists.

How to reduce your general expenses?

Some € 110,000: the amount saved by BSB on general expenses following the intervention of the consulting firm Bridgewater. A result more than respectable for this growing SMEs that had never really taken the time to explore the potential in this area, but which is perfectly applicable to larger accounts...

Founded in July 2009, Bridgewater consulting advises companies how to make savings on their general expenses - an accounting perspective, everything that goes into the "61 Account" for all companies over fifty employees. " As we work on a ’no cure, no pay’ basis, we need a certain volume, " explains Florent Hainaut, co-founder of this young company. The customers are very diversified and the company even counts some large accounts. " We would expect that they have purchasing departments able to manage the expenses. But this is not always the case: we can still achieve results that can be very important "

With the crisis, cost reduction has been on the agenda of almost every business. Good for Bridgewater? Not necessarily. " Many companies have embarked on steps to reduce costs and now believe to have reached the maximum on their own, he says. But if you look closer, you must still have a lot of potential for additional economies. In most cases, we can still save 15 to 20% more. "

At BSB, a publisher of financial software and IT service provider based in Louvain-la-Neuve, the willingness to work on costs was also marked with the crisis, but without making it an obsession. " We decided to do this for prudence, rather than by any need , says Miguel Danckers, CFO of BSB. The year 2009 was difficult for the entire sector. At that time, it was difficult to identify signals for 2010. Without being a problematic situation - sales finally increased by 29% last year - we thought it was interesting to look at our costs, what we did not pay enough attention until now. "

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CFO Magazine - Juin 2011

Trends in cost reduction for companies

Interview of Michel Gassée on the radio show Ecomatin on La Première (RTBF), 11 January 2012 at 7:34.

Chasing savings: Companies must increasingly be creative. Many people would have thought that companies would already have identified all the potential savings in overhead costs. Apparently not, there would be still room. Florent Hainaut from consulting firm Bridgewater: "When the crisis started, many companies have decided to reduce ...

Consultants with a rigorous approach to the unprofessional websites, advices for companies to save money in overhead costs are increasing. Consequence of the crisis or new management style?

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Source: Trends Tendances, Franceline Beretti, 12 janvier 2012