Have you got control of costs in your business?

A familiar pattern in UK food manufacturing right now:

Costs rise → budgets get cut → spend slows → pressure eases (briefly) → costs return.

This isn’t control, it’s a cycle. And many leadership teams are stuck in it, because cost cutting doesn’t change how spend behaves.

• Cost cutting doesn’t fix:
• Decentralised purchasing
• Poor demand discipline
• Lack of category ownership
• Weak supplier management

So the system resets… and the costs come back.

If your only lever is “cut the budget,” you don’t have control, you only have a temporary brake and brakes don’t steer the business.