CredoSense – a battle of quality and affordability for environmental monitoring systems

“You get what you pay for”? A thought that has long been instilled in our ideas is that good quality equals hefty prices.

Price and quality frequently go hand in hand when making a purchase. A lot of consumers, probably also yourself, are willing to pay a bit more for good quality. In general, if a product is expensive, it must be of good quality, and vice versa; a low-quality product will be inexpensive. That’s not entirely correct, though.

Environmental sensor-logger systems and monitoring solutions used in scientific research and industrial fields are too expensive, so much so that it became a huge barrier to conducting research, making science inaccessible. CredoSense started its journey with a vision to address this problem by making these products available at affordable prices.

At CredoSense, our goal of keeping prices affordable involves strategies at various levels of the business, from sourcing materials and their analysis to the manufacturing process, analysis in the lab, quality control, waste reduction, packaging, and storage conditions. 

Here, we will explain the strategies adopted and measures put in place to reach our affordability goal and how we are making science accessible.

Smart Marketing

Let’s start with the section we call the ‘Hogger’– marketing. It is an area of business that can eat up cash faster than any other section of business. A wrong marketing strategy not only shoots product prices as high as the sky but can dry a company out of cash in a very time. So, our marketing strategy is drawn with caution, flexibility and keeping in line with our goal of achieving affordability.

Quality helps building rapport—high-quality builds brand loyalty and impacts sales directly–one of the major costs a company incurs is in acquiring customers. But as a company, when we focus on quality, it reduces this cost dramatically. Now, we do not have to think of complex strategies to achieve this cost optimization. Our simple strategy is to stay true to our goal of producing quality products. Prioritizing quality ensures a loyal customer base, drastically reducing our marketing expenditure as getting repeat business becomes practically free, and they also promote our brand. This brand loyalty paves many paths to add to delivering affordable products as it reduces customer turn and burns ratio, decreasing costs of creating brand awareness and cushioning risks during rolling out new products.

Avoiding fancy packaging—as incredible as it may look, fancy packaging was always off the books for us. And YES, it is a strategic move. How? In business, it is always important to get the basics right, i.e., do what makes most sense financially while being authentic to the customer. So, we opted for simple packaging, reducing packaging and associated overhead costs significantly. To top it off, we use as many recycled and environment-friendly materials as possible in our packaging. This way, we create value for our consumers regarding affordability and environmental justice.

The magical technique – if you visit our website or look at our brochure, or purchase any of our products, you will see a sentence that reads —’We spend the least on marketing so that you can buy at an affordable price. Please help spread the word.” Yes, this is precisely the mantra we use—we are standing to execute a smart marketing strategy – relying on our customers to help us create brand awareness. This strategy, i.e., word of mouth, has worked for thousands of years in creating brand awareness effectively within fractions of traditional marketing costs. This, in turn, reduces our costs of digital marketing.

Optimizing production cost 

The traditional production cost-effectiveness ideas are buying in bulk and purchasing quality raw materials at the best prices. But there are other areas that, if ignored, can quickly add significantly to production costs. At CredoSense, we focus on all those areas that gives us a competitive edge. We believe in sourcing smart. Sourcing raw material and components is a critical part to manufacturing finished goods. Hence, achieving cost-effectiveness in the sourcing is integral to maintaining affordable pricing. At CredoSense, we have a list of verified suppliers with whom our communication is exceptionally fluid. To maximize procurement savings, we maintain a strategic supplier management and consolidation process that is efficient and reduces resource wastage.

Maintaining quality standards

Quality and affordability have always been at the forefront of our business strategy. We strive to create value for our customers, and we believe the best way to do that is to ensure we deliver on our promise of quality. We value that when customers purchase our products, it is an investment they are making that must yield a positive return.

            We look at it this way—eliminating the extra costs for quality eradicates additional costs elsewhere and provides our customers and us with an ensured high-quality product at an affordable price.

            At CredoSense, we have worked hard to develop and deploy a quality management system. Having reliable and dependable quality management and strict quality standards and protocols makes all the difference. All these reduce the cost associated with production wastage, delivery of defective products, and warranty claims. And believe us when we say these can make a huge difference in the final pricing of the product.

Reducing waste by optimizing stock management

It may seem obvious, but it is not as easy a task, especially when a company is scaling up. Often companies struggle to figure out smart ways of trimming the fat. Waste can be identified in many forms and at various levels of business, affecting the final cost of production. Let’s dive a little deeper to grasp a clear picture of how CredoSense is working to reduce waste in stock management –

Avoiding early production—our management team continues to put efforts into keeping a clear and concise understanding of our production and sales cycles. This, in turn, helps maintain a good stock balance and avoid going into early production. Early production means producing unnecessarily large quantities of products before they are needed; this causes a pile-up of stock, ultimately creating congestion of funds and increasing stock facility maintenance costs.

Avoiding overstocking—as the saying goes – too much of anything is bad! It may sound cliché, but it does stand true for production. Producing too much has serious economic costs, mainly if products are not sold as quick as anticipated. We have an extraordinary team who has in-depth knowledge of our operating market and prepares sales projections that are well-planned and data-driven. Hence, we optimize stock maintenance costs and produce affordable products.

Invest in growing our team and skills

Credo Sense takes pride in its team and fosters a working culture that is friendly, safe, and, most importantly, closely knitted like a family. We invest in the right spaces to ensure our teams are highly trained, can grow individually, have adequate resources, and feel happy. These investments have two major economic returns for the company, which impact affordability directly. If you think, how? Here is the answer—

A happy, well-trained, informed, and managed teams yield high productivity, i.e., lowering overall labor costs. A team where employees feel valued and have scope for growth always sees low absenteeism and a high retention rate which reduces hiring & training costs. It is worth noting that hiring and training have high operation costs. A closely knitted team also means everyone feels invested in the business and is willing to help each other when needed to pull off projects quickly, reducing the chances of budget overrun.

Cutting back on lavish expenses

A significant problem that causes companies and start-ups to fail is losing control over spending. When companies are scaling up and have cash flow, it is often tempting to get lured into making unnecessary expenses, such as renting lavish offices that do not resonate with our values of affordability. Areas of spending are well planned and thoroughly by the finance team and then scrutinized by our directors to ensure we stay true to our business’s core philosophy.

Price has always been, and will always be, a significant indicator of quality, so making a high-quality product affordable is a fine line to walk. Our walk on this line is aided by sheer passion, smart management, and the philosophy of ensuring optimum utilization of resources by improving the systems that prevent quality creation from achieving cost-effectiveness. And simply, this is crucial in producing quality products at affordable prices.

Written by: Mortuja Ali