Anders Gusting on Delivering Transparent Savings Across 15 Cost Categories

Anders Gusting on Delivering Transparent Savings Across 15 Cost Categories

Key highlights

• Delivered savings across 15 cost categories for a rapidly expanding retail chain
• Achieved up to 35% savings in marketing and facility-related areas
• Supported a retailer growing to nearly 150 stores across Sweden

Anders Gusting joined ERA Group around two and a half years ago and is based in Sweden. His role combines client acquisition with overseeing project delivery, helping organisations identify inefficiencies and translate opportunities into measurable improvements.

His focus is not only on finding savings, but on helping clients understand where inefficiencies exist and how structured analysis can create long-term value. For Anders, the most rewarding outcomes come when clients not only achieve results but fully trust the process that delivers them.

One of his key client stories involved a fast-growing retail company that had expanded rapidly from zero to nearly 150 stores across Sweden. With that growth came complexity, and the business began to suspect that its internal processes and indirect costs were no longer fully under control.

At the time, they were considering hiring an internal specialist to manage indirect costs. Instead, they engaged ERA Group to help identify where value could be found across their spend base and to bring structure to their expanding operations.

As Anders explains, “they knew something wasn’t right, but they didn’t know where to start—and that’s where we came in.”

The team conducted a full analysis across multiple categories of spend, reviewing everything from travel and freight to consumables, marketing, print, and facilities management. What quickly became clear was that the opportunity was larger than initially expected and required a broader, more structured approach than a single internal hire could provide.

Across the engagement, significant savings were identified—around 27% in travel, 17% in freight, and up to 35% in areas such as marketing and cleaning services. In some categories, the analysis went beyond price alone, considering efficiency metrics such as cost per square metre and service effectiveness.

As Anders puts it, “it wasn’t just about price—it was about understanding how efficiently everything was actually working.”

A key part of the success was transparency. The client remained closely involved throughout the process, with full visibility of progress and decisions at every stage. This created confidence in the model and strengthened the partnership as the work progressed.

For Anders, this engagement reflects the core strength of the ERA Group approach: aligning incentives, sharing responsibility for outcomes, and ensuring that both client and team are working toward the same result. It is this balance of structure, expertise, and collaboration that enables sustainable improvement across complex, fast-growing organisations.

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