Winning in Turbulence

Streamline G&A

When cost reduction is an urgent priority, one of the first places executives look for savings is general and administrative (G&A) expenses—the cost centers that provide front-line support and back-office functions such as finance, marketing, information technology, and human resources.

There are good reasons that G&A represents such an attractive target. When business is growing, companies tend to add support services. The cost of those services usually doesn’t set off alarm bells because profits are healthy and marginal investments are easy to approve. Cost centers may even show apparent correlations between their expanding investments and the improving results of the business. It’s like a sailboat that accumulates barnacles: ...