Ranjan Mendonsa: What Leaders Should Track After a Cost-Saving Plan Begins

Ranjan Mendonsa is an accomplished finance executive based in San Ramon, California, whose nearly four-decade career spans technology, payments, retail, and consumer packaged goods. Since 2013, Mendonsa has served with Visa, starting as senior director of technology finance before becoming vice president of finance, where he now oversees more than $1.6 billion in annual operating expenses and roughly $600 million in capital budgets covering technology, corporate services, and sourcing finance. He led global financial reporting during the integration of Visa Europe, working across cross-functional teams to meet company-wide cost-savings commitments presented to Visa’s board of directors. That firsthand experience tracking savings, timing, and performance through a major cost initiative offers a useful lens for understanding what leaders should monitor once a cost-saving plan gets underway.

A cost-saving plan can look practical when business leaders approve it, but approval only starts the work. A cost-saving plan outlines actions a business uses to reduce spending or lower the cost of running a business area.

Leaders should next build a tracking process that shows whether the plan meets its cost, timing, and performance expectations without weakening daily operations. Each leadership role should track a different part of the result.

Business leaders should confirm whether the plan still supports the goal that justified it. Finance leaders should review spending, savings, and forecasts, while operating managers watch workload, service levels, delays, and other performance effects.

Leaders should establish the baseline first. A baseline is the starting point leaders use to show what changed after the plan began. It may include prior spending, vendor cost, staff time, usage levels, processing time, service volume, error patterns, or other measures that connect to the cost-saving goal.

Finance leaders need to compare planned savings with actual savings. If a plan expected lower monthly software costs, finance leaders should check later bills against the original estimate. They should also separate the saved amount from any new cost that appeared elsewhere.

The gap between expected and actual results shows whether the plan is ahead, behind, or different from the original estimate. Timing deserves its own review apart from the final savings number.

A vendor change, system consolidation, staffing adjustment, or process improvement can require setup work before the business sees a lower cost. Project owners, meaning the person or team responsible for carrying out the plan, need to identify the expected savings start date, the schedule assumption behind it, and any delay that reduces value.

A separate review should distinguish durable savings from short-term savings. A refund, delayed purchase, or avoided setup charge can help one reporting period without changing the ongoing cost of operations. Recurring savings matter differently because they can reduce the regular cost of running a team, service, or function after the first reporting period ends.

The plan also needs key performance indicators that connect to the cost, service, workload, or timing result that led leaders to approve it. A KPI is a number that shows whether an important result is improving, such as cost per transaction, processing time, usage rate, labor hours, or vendor spend. A useful KPI matches the reason for the plan instead of filling a report with numbers that do not guide a decision.

Some cost-saving plans shift cost instead of removing it. A lower software package may require more manual work. A smaller vendor contract may reduce support, and a labor-cost change may move work into another team or expense category.

Operating managers need to report those side effects before the business treats the lower expense as a true gain. Those side effects should also change the financial view of the plan.

A financial model is a planning tool that estimates results using assumptions such as cost, schedule, service volume, use, and savings. When actual data replaces early assumptions, finance leaders can update the model, so forecasts and budget choices reflect what the plan produced.

Tracking should lead to a management decision. Business leaders may continue the plan if savings recur, expand it if the same approach can work in another area, modify it if side effects reduce the benefit, or stop it if disruption outweighs the gain.

A useful cost-saving review gives leaders enough evidence to choose the next action based on cost, performance, and operating effects.

About Ranjan Mendonsa

Ranjan Mendonsa is a California-based finance executive who has served as vice president of finance at Visa since 2013, following an earlier role as senior director of technology finance. He oversees Visa’s global technology and corporate services operating expenses along with related capital budgets, and has led financial reporting for the Visa Europe integration. Based in San Ramon, California, Mendonsa has spent nearly four decades in finance across technology, payments, retail, and consumer packaged goods industries.