British Gas analysed the findings of data gathered from 6,000 smart meters installed in business premises across the UK. Smart meters provide ‘real time’ readings of gas and electricity usage and can be read remotely by energy suppliers.

They found examples of electricity being wasted by businesses outside of business hours included lights being kept on over the weekend, pubs keeping fruit machines on after hours, and vending machines being left on in offices overnight.

Smart meters are being rolled out by energy companies to help energy users to see just when they are using the energy that makes up their bills. They work by transmitting details of your energy usage to a data cantre who can then show you “live time” when your business is using energy. It can quickly help to show you if lights, machinery, or equipment in your premises are remaining on when they are not required.

Such meters are being used by some of the large energy providers as an incentive for you to switch to them as a provider. However, caution must be taken that in agreeing to a supplier to change your meter that you are not restricting yourself from moving to another supplier at a later date.

It can make sense to look at independent suppliers of Smart meters as a way to ensure you retain the ability to approach all suppliers when your contracts renew. There is a cost to having a new meter installed so care must be taken that any savings you make on your energy consumption outweigh the cost of the equipment.

When a supplier quotes for a business, the prices they quote reflects what they believe your account is worth to them – the larger your account, the lower the prices they will quote, as they look to make a certain return from you.

If you split your account up, then the supplier will react accordingly – particularly if you have a name for playing suppliers off against one another.

Likewise if you get prices from a supplier and just cherry pick those that are cheaper than your current supplier, then you can be assured that the supplier you are cherry picking from will either not hold their prices, or make sure that you pay over the odds for “special” and “one-off” items you may order.

The key is about choosing which supplier is best for your business, and working with them to maximise the value of your contract. If a member of staff still wants to spot buy items, just remember the cost of processing invoices and how much it is costing you to run additional suppliers.

You will be ordering two types of product – branded such as Concorde, 3M, Bic, Fellowes, or non-branded which either carry the name of your supplier or Connect, Niceday, or Impega.

It will come as no surprise that the non-branded items are cheaper, not because they are of a lesser quality, but because your supplier can influence their price more than he can for a branded item. The manufacturers of the branded items will ensure that their products are not undersold, thereby “cheapening” the brand.

Non-branded items can sometimes be overlooked, most probably because in years gone by people tried non-branded printer cartridges and it ruined their printer! However, it is worth looking at the non-branded items again for two reasons. Firstly, they are cheaper so you will save money, and secondly and more importantly, in a lot of cases the non-branded item is made in the same place as the branded item but just has a different label on it!

So you need to look at the items in your contract price list, and see how many contain a brand name. For those items, ask your supplier what the alternatives are and ask for free samples to trial them. Your supplier will be happy to oblige as even though they are cheaper for you to buy, they make a higher margin on non-branded items, so everyone is happy. Ordinarily you would expect to see savings of between 15-20%, so worth a little effort.

No matter what strategies you put in place and what work you undertake on your business there are still areas within your business where additional cost savings/ profit can be found. In a lot of instances it is areas of expenditure that can fall under the radar or be deemed too small to bother with, however if you could reduce these costs by 20% collectively then that would be worth having – wouldn’t it?

So to focus your mind why not let us help? All you need to do is download our free E-book “33 Steps to Increase Your Profits” – 45 pages of simple, straightforward tips to save your business money. Just click here to download your own copy

This is true, as even with the introduction of companies such as TNT and UK Mail into the market they still need to use the Royal Mail for the “final mile” delivery.

Even though all seems lost, it is not. The secret to saving money on postage is to work with Royal Mail and make sure you use all of the 60+ discount structures they offer to businesses that are available. These discounts can depend on the volumes of post you send out, or the size and weight, or the destination, but overall there should be more than one that you can apply to your business.

In the end, the discounts are given by the Royal Mail in return for you sorting your post, so that it is easier for them to process when it reaches the sorting office. This may sound time consuming, but can be achieved by just ensuring that your contact addresses are up to date and showing the correct postcode.

These discounts should become more easily accessible in the future, as software becomes available to add a simple barcode to each letter which will be tracked by the Royal Mail.

So what action should you take? Simple, just contact your local Royal Mail business manager and ask what discounts are available for your profile of postage. Also ask whether Printed Postage Impressions (known as PPI) is something your business would benefit from.

Nowadays, digital print is coming to the forefront as digital presses become more affordable to commercial printers.  However, there is still an argument to use litho print as well.

So the secret to gaining best value is all about knowing what print items you regularly use and how much of each item that you consume.

For example, if you use a lot of letterhead or business cards and the content on them does not change very often, then look and see if you can increase the quantities ordered and then ask your printer to hold stock and deliver it in when required. They can then work a basic stock management system for you, and let you know when levels of stock drop below a set level.

On the other hand, you may have printed items that you only rarely use and find that they go out of date quickly and stock becomes redundant, thereby wasting the money spent on printing them. These are the type of items where you should see if they can be printed digitally – most of the time digital print is exactly the same as litho, but for some images it can be slightly of lesser quality. Ask for a digital sample to check and then if the quality is okay, you can order at much reduced run levels, saving money on each order and reducing redundant stock.

When one of your suppliers approaches you and says “I am very sorry but we must put your prices up because of blah..blah..blah..!” do you always accept this is the case? What if you were to refuse, or even ask for a discount on current prices of say 5%?

Some suppliers may refuse and say take it or leave it, but most will reluctantly agree. In the end we all work to a margin that will give us what we hope will be a good profit. If they are working on a 5% margin then your request may well finish them off, but working on those margin levels they will not survive long in their market anyway.

It is all about communication. Simply talk to your supplier, and remember that you are the customer and that they want your business. If a supplier approaches you asking for a price increase then ask them to back up the reasons why, and, if need be, ask other similar suppliers if they too are implementing price increases. That way you can understand where the increases are coming from….but still refuse to accept them!

The UK telecom industry has long sought ways to retain their customers with minimal effort on their own behalf. One of the most successful way of achieving this is to sign up businesses of all sizes on rolling contracts with very restrictive termination clauses. This means that unless you remember to advise your supplier that you are leaving within, usually, a 30 day window then your contract will rollover, and you must wait another 12 months to get out of it.

To help remedy this situation Ofcom are introducing a new ruling that from 31st December 2011 a telecom supplier cannot sign up a business with less than 10 employees on an automatically rolling contract, unless that business had opted in to such a contract.

For businesses who are already in an automatic rolling contract the rollover cannot be enforced after 31st December unless the business opts in to doing so.

In a market where prices are still reducing and technology is moving at a pace this is great news for small businesses to ensure that they are not being tied into an uncompetitive  contract for a longer period than they need be.

However with every positive comes a negative! With the abolition of the rolling contract you must beware of telecom companies looking to tie you into long term contracts of more than 2 years. Ofcom have a dim view of overly long contracts but currently have no legislation to stop it happening.

If you are unsure of your current contractual status and the options open to you then please contact us for free, impartial advice.

Over the weekend as I worked my way through the papers I came across this advert from T-Mobile. I have to say I read it several times to make sure I had got it right – I get a FREE iPhone 3GS for just £15.32 per month! Now I am well aware that times are hard and everything is becoming devalued however I never expected a shift so extreme where even “free” now costs us money.

As ever, there are pro’s and con’s for such a radical change in our thinking. On the plus side we here at Spiral offer our clients a couple of free services – free overhead reviews, and free energy management – so it looks as though we can now get away with charging our clients under this “free” banner. This could help in our sales budgeting for next year.

On the down side, and this is really a case of T-Mobile shooting themselves and all other mobile networks in their collective feet, with everyone now being aware that “free” costs money how else will they be able to hoodwink people into expensive contracts on the promise of “multiple free stuff”.

Joking aside this advert epitomises the UK mobile networks, and how they continue to mis-sell their products to us on a regular basis. Their over-use of the word “free” defies belief – none more so than our friends at T-Mobile with this advert.

The question I am dying to ask T-Mobile is, if the phone is free what am I paying £15.32 per month for 24 months for? Line rental? Well I assume if there is a charge for line rental that they will be running a copper cable (if it is not stolen!) to my house as BT/ Virgin do? No, there is no such line? So what am I paying rental for? The number they allocate me from their platform? Seriously(!) that costs them £15 per month to let me have the number?? I think not.

Funnily enough I reckon that the £15.32 they collect goes to pay for your iPhone – and if that is the case the iPhone is not free, is it! I have said it before, and I will say it again – I long for a mobile network that sells itself on good honest clear pricing. Surely an advert such as this has to be the last straw in what is acceptable and what is not, or maybe it is just the start of even more extreme claims.

Free food from Tesco’s anyone?

The solution is simply to pay less invoices! Unfortunately this does not mean ignoring payment and they will go away, but means you need to look at who you pay each month, and see if there are any suppliers you pay more than once. If so, ask them if you can consolidate to a single monthly invoice that they send at the end of the month, which incorporates all the orders and deliveries for that calendar month.

Usually this is more common in areas of consumable ordering i.e stationery, catering supplies, building supplies etc, but there is no reason why these cannot be consolidated.

So a quick action you can take right now is to ask your cashier or accounts function to print off all supplier payment transactions for one month, and see who you pay more than once.

Remember – by just reducing one supplier from two invoices per month to one will save you over £500 per year in indirect costs.