Commercial gas and electricity markets are hugely complex markets which have hugely significant impacts on both domestic and business finances. Despite this wide ranging impact of the cost of these essential utilities, they are phenomenally difficult markets in which to secure competitive pricing and even the most dynamic buyers will struggle to secure great deals.

The reason these markets are so complex is due to a number of factors, such as the cost of oil, global and local politics and quite clearly, the difficulty and cost involved in setting up supply of commercial gas and electricity. These are simply not markets where any small player can arrive on scene with a unique selling point.

Arguably, the large supply companies exploit this relatively uncompetitive market place to suit their own desire for accelerated capital accumulation. A crucial tool in navigating you way to the best achievable pricing in these markets is through expert knowledge of the suppliers themselves. Couple this with the necessary contacts with which to negotiate and also an understanding of how the many complex price drivers interact then, with this knowledge, it is possible to gain a competitive edge in the market and obtain either long term fixed pricing at competitive rates or the best possible flexible pricing.

At Online Energy, we have specialised in these markets since 1993 and have brokered energy deals for our partner businesses with great success throughout this period. Ours is the expert knowledge that can help your business to secure the best possible deals on commercial gas and commercial electricity prices.

Business and customer dynamics have changed over recent years, with businesses exploring the cyclical nature of expanding into new markets and subsequently retreating to their core business interests. Throughout this cycle, businesses have grown through mergers and acquisitions to the extent that the vast majority of markets are dominated by a select group of key players. One side effect of this evolution is that customers frequently feel little loyalty to their service providers when a better deal is available elsewhere.

As both business and domestic consumers, we now understand the necessity to proactively seek out deals and the need to switch service providers to secure them. At Online Energy, our specialisation is to help business customers to identify these opportunities to gain market leading deals for both commercial gas and commercial electricity. These deals vary for different customers. Usage of commercial gas and electricity varies between different business models on a scale that dwarfs the variance between the domestic use in a one bedroom flat and a large country pile. It is due to these huge variances in usage that our services are so dependent on our expert knowledge to secure a bespoke pricing plan for each client if needs be.

For the domestic user, a whole wealth of companies now specialise in price comparison for these utilities, but commercial gas and electricity are subject to less price protection than the domestic equivalent. Securing competitive commercial electricity pricing for these essential supplies can be hugely significant for your business and is an avenue definitely worth exploring.

Unless you are in a very small minority of businesses, commercial gas and/or commercial electricity are absolutely essential requirements for your business. Assuming that you do fit into this majority, the significantly increased costs of these utilities in recent years will have had one of two clear effects. They will have either taken a little bit of the shine off you otherwise glowing profit and loss account, or if you are one of the less fortunate businesses, these increases will have posed a significant challenge.

Commercial gas and electricity costs are not the easiest to manage; if you have found the costs to be a challenge, this is not because you have missed an absolute killer deal that nobody bothered to mention as these deals simply do not exist. It may well often be the case that there is more scope to manage these costs that you may have realised.

The key to securing the most competitive pricing for your business gas and electricity is employing expert knowledge of the market place and the suppliers operating within that market. At Online Energy, we are connected with commercial electricity suppliers, and it is exactly this knowledge and expertise that we do possess. For over 15 years, we have been using this knowledge and expertise to secure market leading deals for our clients. Unfortunately, we are unable to produce the killer deal, but we can ensure that you secure the best possible pricing that may either help to add a bit of shine to your profit and loss or possibly even help stave off commercial disaster.

In business, controlling – or at least, managing costs – is an essential element to maintaining a healthy bottom line. Some costs may require some creative thought and talented individuals to manage effectively, but they are elements where you may feel your business is properly equipped to succeed. In some more challenging areas, such as business rates and taxation, you will find yourself at the other end of the spectrum with decidedly minimal capacity for cost control (within the law at least.)

Somewhere in the middle of the scale is a an area that does afford some opportunity for cost control ,but does not offer a typical free market of suppliers and service levels from which to choose and with whom to negotiate. These markets are the commercial gas and commercial electricity markets. Deregulation in the late 20th century has afforded nominal benefits of competition such as supplier choice, but the existence of truly competitive pricing, incentives, unique service propositions or marked point of difference between suppliers is actually somewhat limited.

In fairness to the suppliers, most are only re-sellers, particularly in the case of gas where we are ever more heavily reliant on imported fuel. With this business model come limited capacity for aggressive pricing. However, at Online Energy, we can help your business to obtain the best possible pricing from all of the available suppliers to secure the best possible commercial gas and electricity pricing.

This can only be achieved through detailed market knowledge of commercial gas and electricity, but this is precisely what we possess.

To ensure that your needs for commercial gas and commercial electricity are met through cost effective contracts with the best supplier for your needs, it will help to utilise the expertise of our service at Online Energy.

We have been brokering commercial gas and electricity since 1993 and are truly experts in this field. With a well established network of supplier contacts and the expert market knowledge to understand the key price drivers, we are able to identify the optimum fixed price deals or the best flexible rate providers for your business needs.

The business energy markets and their pricing is already hugely complex with normal market dynamics being skewed by many factors. Previously nationalised giants such as British Gas dominate the market place and for the majority of businesses there is only one fixed delivery conduit for gas and one for electricity (these conduits being the national grid.) This restriction limits the truly competitive nature of supply of commercial gas and commercial electricity.

Pricing is influenced further by complex global dynamics. Oil has a direct impact on the cost of electricity and oil itself has endured a rollercoaster ride of pricing during the early 21st century. Global recession ceased a seemingly relentless upward trend in pricing to almost everybody’s surprise, but as we enter the second decade of the millennium, despite challenging conditions, many indicators appear to show that the escalator of inflation has re-established its upward path for commercial gas and electricity. This means there may be a lot to gain by securing pricing immediately.

There are very few businesses that do not have some sort of demand for commercial gas, electricity or frequently both. For the majority of businesses, the costs attributed to this need are a significant outlay on the bottom line.

Unlike many costs attributed to business, commercial gas and electricity can be a very tricky area in which to secure truly competitive pricing or the long term fixed pricing that may be essential to providing stability. For many manufacturing industries where commercial energy is an extremely substantial outlay, the ability to manage these costs may not only benefit the bottom line, but it may be the means to survival in difficult trading times.

Our mission at Online Energy is to assist businesses to secure the pricing that will either simply help them manage their costs or possibly make a critical enhancement to their bottom line.

Commercial gas and electricity are services that businesses desire to reduce their costs. Not only is there a cost benefit to this in its own right, but businesses are set to come under more and more pressure from local, national and European tiers of government to reduce consumption through carbon trading schemes and other such measures. As part of our package of services and utilising our expert knowledge in the field of commercial gas and electricity, we can assist businesses in navigating the maze of incentives and regulations that are continually evolving to affect businesses and their consumption of commercial gas and electricity on a daily basis.

Securing the best possible pricing for your business needs is an absolutely critical element to running a successful business. Knowledge of the marketplace in which you are dealing is an essential tool for the successful buyer to achieve results.

One of the costs common to almost all businesses in terms of their needs is that of cheap commercial gas and cheap commercial electricity. Whilst the usage of these two utilities will vary between different businesses, there are very few business models where they are not, at the very least, a noticeable cost on the bottom line. Despite this common usage and significant costs of these essential utilities, there are very few businesses with an in depth understanding of the markets from which they are sourced and comparatively minimal effort is spent reducing cost prices themselves.

Most businesses, when challenged with reducing the costs of commercial gas and electricity will focus on reducing consumption. Whilst this is both sensible and necessary, at Online Energy we wish to help your business secure the best available supplier prices for your business needs in addition to advising on how to optimise commercial gas and electricity usage.

We aim to provide the detailed, expert market knowledge of commercial gas and electricity markets that is missing from most businesses. Working in partnership with yourselves, we provide access to pricing and fixed contract pricing that is simply not available without direct access to the right suppliers at the right times. These things can only come through years of experience and expertise.

The killer deal for commercial electricity rates quite simply does not exist. This is not a market where suppliers are indulging in loss leaders to secure business. With a limited number of suppliers competing for your business and a guaranteed demand for the product, the supply companies simply need to maintain a workable customer base and profit margin to thrive as a business. This is not to say that the supply companies are not always seeking to create price plans that will help to grow their market share and offer a point of difference from their competitors. Therefore deals are available; it’s just that they may not be very attractive.

It is exactly these niche commercial electricity price offerings that Online Energy can help to discover for your business. These may well afford your business an opportunity to achieve pricing which benefits your business in a way you have previously failed to realise.

Fixed price deals will never provide a headline-grabbing price that will get everybody excited, but in the current climate of sustained growth for business electricity prices over the long term, fixed pricing may well offer benefits in pricing security for periods of up to five years. If the next five years were to see pricing continue as it has over previous five, such a five year price plan would only have one major drawback; that being when the five year period ends and your business is faced with a significant price increase.

Securing the best possible commercial electricity pricing requires market knowledge and the help of an expert price broker.

Prices of gas are on the increase for all consumers, and this is particularly harmful to the commercial gas user where prices are less protected than those for the domestic user.

Market analysts are predicting that the price of gas is likely to continue upwards in the long term. Prices are influenced by many of the factors that affect any business; staff, utilities, equipment, oil and exchange rates. In addition to these common influences, commercial gas supply is strongly affected by international politics.

These are all dimensions that heavily influence the cost to the suppliers of trading gas in the market place, but the way they then trade commercial gas is only nominally comparable to the free market supply of most other raw materials and services procured by businesses on a day to basis.

Other than bottled supplies, all commercial gas is supplied through the national grid by a limited number of suppliers. The suppliers themselves tread a difficult path, UK sourced gas is a perpetually rarer and rarer commodity meaning that ethical suppliers can only enhance margins through effective trading and managing their own costs. On the contrary, the suppliers seem very happy to maintain what appear to be conveniently high profit margins in the absence of open competition.

As a business consumer, the way to secure optimum pricing for commercial gas is to use a supply broker such as ourselves at Online Energy where we have the market knowledge and connections to identify the best pricing and contracts for your specific needs.

It is completely unrealistic to expect the long term pricing of commercial gas and commercial electricity to head in any direction other than upwards. Large scale discoveries of gas have been made in Eastern Europe over recent years that have changed market dynamics and secured midterm availability. They have not, however, drastically reduced costs.

The price of commercial electricity is heavily linked to the cost of oil. Both gas and oil are presently still in abundant supply, but these supplies are not limitless and both natural resources see their costs of extraction steadily rising. In addition to the increased commercial costs of supplying these, both green and other local taxes continue to add pressure to the costs of commercial gas and electricity.

Clearly the long term trend is set to continue. However, in the short and mid-term, there will always be fluctuations in price, because as a procurement function for these utilities, you have two possibilities to benefit your business when buying commercial energy. You can either secure flexible pricing at the lowest possible rate or you can secure long term fixed pricing in to provide pricing stability, either because it is a safe option or through a gamble on a conviction of imminent increased costs of commercial gas and commercial electricity.

At Online Energy, we specialise in identifying the best available deals on both fixed and flexible pricing for both commercial gas and electricity. As an expert energy broker since 1993, we have helped many businesses to realise cost benefits they simply could not have done alone.