Online Energy News

Time is money

admin — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 15:28:16 +0000

Profit and growth have both been areas commonly used to measure the success of businesses throughout time. However, when growing a business or striving for increased profit margins, many companies find that they have less and less time to invest in areas that are not seen as being directly related to the success of the company; for example, maintenance costs such as business gas and electricity. This is increasingly referred to in UK society as being cash rich but time poor.

Time and resource as commodities have become almost as valuable as money in several areas of business. It is common for a company to measure the cost of projects or jobs in both monetary value and the hours that the task will take its people to complete. The amount of businesses that are beginning to look at their commercial energy in a similar light is increasing, with more and more businesses becoming aware of how a short time spent contacting a commercial energy broker to enquire about commercial electricity prices can, in the long run, save them both time and a significant amount of money on day-to-day energy costs.

In the current economic climate, both time and money are very often in shorter supply than many businesses would like. It takes just minutes to make an enquiry to us at Saturn Energy about cheap business gas and electricity and to find out if we could make savings for your company. These savings can then be better spent on more resource, effectively giving businesses more time to grow.

Future-proof your company: review your business energy suppliers

admin — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 15:18:14 +0000

Business running costs have risen over recent years and look set to continue to rise throughout the UK. More businesses than ever are feeling the effects of the recession. These rising costs combined with a tough economic climate in many sectors means that business leaders are increasingly aware of the need to save money and curb excess spending where possible. One aspect that many firms fail to consider is that considerable savings could be made by switching to cheaper business energy suppliers.

At a time when cost saving is increasingly important to businesses, this simple yet highly effective change is proving invaluable to many companies, allowing organisations to invest in other areas using the savings made by switching energy suppliers. Global financial markets have been somewhat unstable over recent months, affected by variations in the cost of oil and fuel, amongst other things. These fluctuations have had a profound effect on the cost of everyday utilities. Rising commercial gas prices and commercial electricity costs make sourcing the cheapest business energy suppliers a priority for many firms.

More and more companies are turning to brokers to help secure cheap business gas and electricity. At Saturn Energy we focus on saving money for our business partners by acting as a broker to source the cheapest commercial energy at a fixed cost. Fixing commercial energy costs is one way to help businesses to regain confidence in their own financial future by removing the anxiety of potential price hikes.

Get ahead with forward planning

admin — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 15:09:11 +0000

Over the last twelve months in the UK, weather conditions have ranged from one extreme to another. This summer we saw record highs in terms of temperature and last winter snowfall was at its highest for years. With extreme weather comes an inevitable fluctuation in the volume of business gas and electricity used by companies. As a result, a number of firms will be reviewing their strategic spending based upon the conditions of last winter. Several companies were caught out by rising business gas and electricity prices due to increased use of these utilities. It is now widely acknowledged that although in the summer months, planning for a cold winter is not at the forefront of many meeting agendas, it pays to ensure you are prepared for increased fuel costs.

In summer, businesses generally use less commercial electricity and gas than in winter, even with machinery, IT infrastructure and general building maintenance to consider. Thanks to daylight saving during British Summer Time, less artificial light is needed and due to warmer summers, heating costs drop across many sectors.

Several firms are now factoring key learnings from last winter into their budgets and planning for the encroaching colder months by reviewing their commercial gas and electricity suppliers. Summer is an ideal time to set plans in motion to search the market for cheap business energy suppliers, allowing businesses to fix fuel costs in time for winter. At Saturn Energy, we understand that forward planning is increasingly important to our business partners at a time when cost savings can be tantamount to revenue generation.

Concentrate on business, not costs

admin — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 13:31:35 +0000

Business can often be very demanding regardless of whether your operation is struggling or successful. A thriving business will place demands on both personnel and cash flow to manage an important period of growth and a struggling business generates a surprisingly similar set of staff and cash flow challenges for very different reasons.

At any time businesses can benefit from outsourcing some of the more mundane tasks that they need to undertake that are nevertheless beneficial to the bottom line. One such activity could be the sourcing of your commercial gas and electricity supply. This is the type of activity that can reap very real benefits for your business but without the right level of expertise, these benefits may be very hard won. At Saturn Energy, whether your business is thriving or struggling we can provide access to market beating pricing for commercial gas and electricity for your business. Utilising our service enables you to focus your efforts on generating revenue streams or managing other, more easily influenced costs.

With 20 or so years specialising in brokering contracts for commercial gas and electricity, we possess the expert knowledge to swiftly arrange your service provision and to provide those benefits rapidly to your cash flow. Attempting this in house may see many weeks of research being undertaken into these difficult markets before anybody is even close to negotiating with a supplier. This can clearly be seen as time wasted in many people’s opinions.
Commercial gas and electricity are almost certainly essential to your business and you should not pay over the odds for them.

Switch, negotiate and play the market

admin — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 13:28:42 +0000

The deregulated business gas and electricity market provides an opportunity for proactive businesses to seek competitive pricing for their supply of these utilities. These opportunities are taken through any one or a combination of the following approaches; Firstly there may be an opportunity to benefit from more competitive pricing by switching suppliers, secondly, you may be able to negotiate an improved cost price with either your existing or an alternative supplier, and lastly, you can opt to fix pricing, or end a fixed price agreement to take advantage of anticipated changes in wholesale prices of business gas and electricity.

The first two paths are a pretty familiar and standard route for any business to adopt to improve their cost prices. For some supplier – customer relationships, great importance can be attached to building long term relationships that influence how aggressively price management is pursued. However, in the case of dealing with one of the heavyweight business gas and electricity suppliers this is unlikely to be a concern. Most businesses would happily take whatever they could get from a seemingly faceless company but herein lays the problem; the suppliers can afford to be fairly faceless as they benefit from a very secure customer base.

These first two approaches should be adopted and reviewed regularly but the last option of trading on market fluctuations will reap most reward if pursued successfully. As this is a specialised area, at Saturn Energy, we can advise of you of how and when to benefit from such an approach in addition to assisting in switching between and negotiating with business gas and electricity suppliers.

Cutting costs the brokering way

admin — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 13:24:59 +0000

Ensuring that you manage your costs is as big a part of running a successful business as generating revenue. One is completely redundant without the other. The more entrepreneurial minded will frequently be more excited about increasing revenue streams and driving new business than managing costs. It is also fair to acknowledge that managing costs is never going to grow a business whereas new business will but, without cost control, it is easy to fall into the role of busy fools.
Even when you begin to acknowledge the need to manage costs, there then exists a hierarchy of which cost management activities are likely to provide the most benefit to the bottom line. The cost of business gas and electricity is unlikely to be high on the list of most manageable costs. Despite its high volume of usage, these utility products are provided by a small number of suppliers with a largely guaranteed customer base. Traditional negotiating tactics may deliver some results but will not be as effective as in other sourcing activities.
To obtain competitive pricing for business gas and electricity needs a bit of industry knowledge, the likes of which is not typically available in most businesses. At Saturn Energy, we have been specialising in brokering contracts for the supply of business gas and electricity for our partner businesses for around twenty years with great success. The method employed uses knowledge of key market drivers to identify beneficial market conditions and to also identify suppliers best suited to your needs.

Fix or flex

admin — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 13:19:16 +0000

It is not difficult to secure a reliable supply of commercial gas and electricity for your business needs but it is fairly difficult to be 100% certain that you secured the best available pricing from the deregulated UK market for commercial gas and electricity.
The UK suppliers of commercial gas and electricity have not exactly stretched the concept of competitive practice and this is reflected in fairly comparable base pricing being offered by all of the suppliers. Potentially in a different market, the relative inactivity of the major players in the industry would provide opportunity aplenty for more dynamic businesses to gain market share. With the very nature of the industry making market entry somewhat challenging this type of market shake up is not very common. Rather, the years since de-regulation have seen a gradual merging of many of the biggest suppliers leaving very few to compete.
The key to securing the best pricing available hinges on the ability to identify price fluctuations and benefit from these by either fixing or flexing prices at an opportune time and also identifying the supplier that offers the best pricing options to meet your consumption needs for commercial gas and electricity.
Selecting the best supplier and the timing of your decision to either fix pricing or adopt flexible pricing requires expert knowledge that is not widely available as a skill set in most businesses. There are many procurement professionals who understand how to buy well but simply don’t understand these specific markets. At Saturn Energy we do and would like to share that knowledge.

Different approaches

admin — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 13:13:16 +0000

In order to manage your costs for business gas and electricity it is necessary to have a dual pronged approach of managing both the cost price that you pay for these utilities and also managing your consumption.
There are further practices that can be adopted such as identifying opportunities for self generation of electricity. This could be through mechanisms such as solar panels or wind turbines. There are also likely to be more advantages achieved through carbon trading over coming years.
Accepting the benefits that these other approaches offer, the two main prongs of your attack on costs remain as the need to minimize both costs and consumption.
In order to identify ways to reduce consumption of business electricity you will need to assess both the equipment that places a demand on electricity itself, be it a humble light bulb or a multi million pound machine and you will also need to look at working practices. 24 hour operations may find shorter working hours reduce consumption of business electricity with no loss of productivity or alternatively running one machine at a more efficient rate for longer hours may be more cost effective than at a high output for a shorter duration.
There are many ways to identify cost savings and no one size fits all approach. Managing the cost price of business gas and electricity is the same. Different suppliers offer different benefits and you will need to identify one that meets the requirements of your business. At Saturn Energy, we can assist you to identify the most appropriate supplier and pricing for your needs.

Computer curse

admin — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 13:06:44 +0000

In the business world our usage of commercial gas and electricity has faced two opposing influences that affect our consumption of these utilities. Typically, the vast majority of machinery and appliances that consume business gas or electricity are far more efficient than their predecessors which has led to a reduction in energy consumption for most business processes, be they boiling a kettle or running a metal press. Simultaneously, businesses have expanded a whole new realm of business machines that make huge demands on business energy. The primary change has been the widespread introduction of the computer.
Make no mistake, computers have been around a while and they have also become far more efficient as they have increased their computing power, the significant change is simply the massive expansion in their numbers. These business changing tools are here to stay but the efficiencies that they have undoubtedly realised for business have placed very real demands on our consumption of business electricity.
The impact of all this technology has two impacts, on the national scale suppliers need to produce more electricity in a challenging environment where the fossil fuels that power traditional power stations are only ever going to increase in cost. Also, the environmental awareness of the new millennium places increased demands on the suppliers to operate more sensitively. On a local scale, your increased consumption places cost demands on your business.
In these difficult times, we at Saturn Energy have come into being to assist our customers to secure the best possible pricing for their commercial gas and electricity needs.

Frittering away energy

admin — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 13:00:40 +0000

Energy is the essence of life. Without it, nothing happens. There are so many different forms of energy that surround our every day existence, such as light and sound, that we take these totally for granted. To many people, more obvious forms of energy are those of the energy released by gas or electrical energy. These two types of energy are still very common in our everyday lives but the need to have these delivered to us by manmade means makes them far more conspicuous to us.
This conspicuousness and manmade method of delivery come intertwined with a need to exchange goods or services to secure our supplies of gas and electrical energy. In simple terms business gas and electricity cost money. The last statement comes as very little surprise to anybody. This demand also creates further energy consumption as procurement specialists and small business people devote endless joules of energy trying to manage and reduce these costs. If only this energy itself could be better captured, then maybe we would use less business gas and electricity in the first instance.
Managing the costs of business gas and electricity is best achieved through a combination of two approaches. Firstly, reduce your consumption in the first instance. For some businesses there will be many easy wins but for others already focused on efficiency these may be hard won. The other mechanism is to manage the unit cost. At Saturn Energy we specialise in this latter approach. Our success in this area may also help you reduce the amount of energy wasted fretting over costs.