2021 Cost Recovery Survey

What has happened to volumes that have formed the basis of the traditional soft cost recovery model that the vast majority of firms utilize?

As part of Mattern’s ongoing management of our clients’ outsourcing and output contracts, volumes overall have decreased by approximately 40-50% for black & white copies and prints, color copies and prints, and scans. Obviously, any decrease in these volumes will lead to a decrease of the captured expense recovery.

Why?

Overall volumes decreased due to the increase in digital output due to remote working, and the fact that home-based workers are reluctant to output large documents due to lack of home capabilities, capacity, and personal expense.

Therefore, the focus of the Survey is to address the question of “How do firms plan to move forward and recover costs in a hybrid work environment?” It also created the opportunity for Mattern to ask about the growing cost of cybersecurity and whether firms are pursuing recovering these charges from their clients.

Before addressing these questions, let’s step back and summarize what firms are currently doing:

- 97% of the firms responding to the Survey are utilizing the traditional cost recovery model where support services costs are formulated by firm management and charged to clients in addition to the recovery of hard costs which are 3rd party invoices passed through to the client.

- 3% of the firms have abandoned traditional soft cost recovery or are utilizing a flat percentage of the hourly billing.

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