Consumption management service
Our clients benefit from reduced energy and water consumption, reduced costs, reduced carbon emissions and accurate management information simply by using smart data loggers or smart meters.
For several years, Business Cost Consultants has been seeking the means to be able to help our clients minimise the consumption of their utilities. We have been investigating the market for smart meters and data loggers and have found several companies offering a very comprehensive and cost-effective service with intelligent, technologically advanced and reliable products.
Currently, many organisations only gather information on the consumption of their electricity, gas and water when they take a meter reading, which usually happens once a month. This makes it very difficult to properly understand the organisation’s consumption profiles for each utility. The devices Business Cost Consultants provide for our clients take readings very frequently, usually half hourly, and can provide detailed reports on the actual consumption the day after (known as “day plus one”).
With this detailed management information, our clients are able to achieve:
- more accurate accounts and budgets;
- improved forecasting of future consumption on energy and water;
- identification of inefficiencies and wastage;
- bespoke reports on energy and water consumption, including “what-if” scenarios.
As well as the improved management information, the Consumption Management Service from Business Cost Consultants provides the following features:
Reduced consumption of energy and water
Case studies have proved that our expertise, coupled with the sophisticated software and patented hardware enable us to make double figure reductions in our clients’ gas, electricity and water consumption. See the Rangers FC case study where we made savings of over 67% on their water consumption.
Bill validation
Because the data is very accurate, it is possible to use the consumption data to verify your bills. This is especially useful because it does not rely on someone on the premises taking a physical reading, which may be inaccurate if they are not the usual meter reader. Even commercial meter readers and those who handle the data make mistakes from time to time.
Billing by electronic data (EDI)
Business Cost Consultants are always driving for improvements and efficiencies that will benefit our clients. We are currently building our own software system to enable us to receive utility billing data electronically from suppliers. Our software will check the incoming bills and produce exception reports which contain inaccurate data. We will carefully check that inaccurate data and correct it where necessary.
Once we validate your bills electronically we shall be able to transmit it to your own accounting system, where the bills can be processed for payment, as normal. This will effectively replace all your paper bills with electronic data, saving you much administration time and money.
The alert function
If consumption increases significantly, the device sends an alert to a nominated person in the organisation. The on-site engineer could receive a text message or email from the system to let him/her know there is an issue that needs attention. If the engineer doesn’t respond within a certain time, the system escalates to the next nominated contact, and so on until a suitable response has been achieved. This is particularly useful for non-visible problems such as underground water leaks and gas leaks.
Zoning of your premises
Your building may have many departments, areas of production and/or many floors, but only one electricity meter or one metered water supply coming into the building. Therefore, you would normally only be able to establish how much energy or water is being used in the building as a whole.
Would it be useful to know exactly how much of each utility is being consumed in the key zones? Business Cost Consultants have the capability to provide you with this functionality, by sub-metering or zoning your sites.
Environmental responsibility
It is well known that the generation of electricity from fossil fuels and the combustion of gas releases carbon emissions into the environment. Also, because electricity is used to pump and process mains water, your water consumption also has an impact on your organisation’s carbon emissions. Therefore, any consumer of electricity that is generated in this way, or any consumer of gas (mains or LPG) is contributing to the “Greenhouse Effect”. Therefore, by undertaking a programme of reducing your energy and water consumption, you are helping the environment by reducing part of the UK’s carbon emissions. See our section on Energy Conservation.
Independent advice
Business Cost Consultants have over 12 years experience of analysing utility data from all types of sites. We use our expertise to analyse our clients’ data and look for anomalies and inefficiencies in water and energy consumption. Then we help our clients to identify the causes of those inefficiencies, by sending our experts on to site. The results should be savings in energy and water costs as a result of reduced consumption.
Energy conservation surveys
As part of our service we can arrange for free energy conservation surveys to be carried out. Our consultants can make good use of the detailed consumption data provided by the smart data loggers to help reduce your energy and water consumption.
Because Business Cost Consultants is totally independent and not tied to any utility suppliers, we find it very important that the energy and water consumption data collected is independent from your utility supplier, so it is not affected if you switch supplier.
To summarise, there are significant benefits to be achieved by making use of our cost effective Consumption Management Service:
- The ability to gather excellent management and accounting information on your electricity, gas, LPG or water consumption at each of your sites.
- Monitoring and targeting reductions in your energy and water consumption.
- Improved environmental responsibility — reduced wastage and lower carbon emissions.
- The data is suitably accurate to be used to validate your energy and water bills.
- Zoning — to be able to monitor the water and energy consumption for different facilities or departments.
- An alert function on the devices would send a text-message or an email to a nominated person at the site if consumption jumps or drops dramatically.
- Business Cost Consultants use our expertise to identify inefficiencies and help reduce consumption.
- Through a password-protected web site clients can use their web browser, to view bespoke reports on their gas, electricity or water consumption 24 hours a day.
Like to know more? Please contact us on 0141 943 3344 to discuss how our Consumption Management Service could benefit your organisation.