Team Auditel get on their bikes for charity

Team Auditel, from left to right: Adrian Burton, Chris Bridge, Laurence Fitch, Edward Brewer, Claire Power-Browne, Steve Ray and Denis Brennan

Inspired by Laurence Fitch’s example in this year’s Great British Bike Ride, our Business Development Director, Edward Brewer, has encouraged (and press-ganged!) a number of colleagues into taking part in the 2011 event. The Great British Bike Ride 2011 will be in support of ‘Help for Heroes’, ‘The Rugby Players Association Benevolent Fund’ and the ‘ RFU Injured Players Foundation’ and will be the second  in a series of  annual events which aim to raise £1 million for charity over 5 years. The ride will be from Lands End to Twickenham Stadium in late August and early September and Team Auditel have already started training hard (well, they’ve all bought new bicycle clips anyway!). We’ll keep you posted about their progress and let you know how you can sponsor them over the coming months.

Celebrating Success at Auditel’s 15th National Conference

Last Friday saw over 120 Auditel Consultants gather at Whittlebury Hall for our 15th annual National Conference. As usual, it was a packed day with presentations and workshops designed to help our consultants develop new skills and plan for growth and success in 2011.

Our excellent presenters included Mike Pagan, author of “Stop Faffing About”, Sarah Setterfield, one of the leading corporate image consultants in the UK, Time Management expert Deborah Wain, of LDL Leadership Development, and Colonel Stuart Tootal DSO OBE, formerly of 3 Para, author of the Sunday Times best seller ‘Danger Close – Commanding 3 PARA’ and now Chief Security Officer for Barclays.

Delegates attending a workshop

All the speakers were fascinating, giving great insights into their particular fields of expertise and providing much food for thought for our delegates. Read more…

The UK’s energy outlook – what does the future hold for energy consumers?

The Major Energy User Council‘s (MEUC) third Autumn Roadshow hit venues around the UK earlier this month with discussions and presentations addressing the theme of  “Energy Prospects for Your Business under the Coalition Government”. Individual sessions included thorny and timely issues such as “New government energy initiatives and their implications for customers”, “Prospects for gas and electricity supplies this winter”, “Budgeting for CRC charges and recycling payments”, and ” The Outlook for energy prices in the industrial and commercial market”.

With the climate and energy secretary, Chris Huhne’s, recent g0-ahead on 8 potential sites for new nuclear reactors, debate about the UK’s future energy security, public spending cuts and government commitments to climate change targets all now in the mix, it’s clear that energy – both usage and supply – is set to be a major area of concern for UK business for the foreseeable future.

For a concise summary of key messages that came out of the MEUC event, have a look at this blog posted by Auditel consultant Stephen Gaubert.

Auditel welcome a new Business Coach to the team

We’re delighted to announce the appointment of Matt Sidwell to the Auditel support team, in the brand new post of Business Coach to our network of over 170 consultants. With a tripling in the number of Auditel consultants over the past five years we believe that Matt, who has been providing business coaching to business owners and executives for 17 years, will be a very valuable addition to our coaching and mentoring team and will help us to ensure the professional development of our consultants and maintain their position as the UK’s premier network of cost and purchase management consultants.

As Matt says, “I’m really looking forward to being part of the Auditel team and to working with Auditel consultants to help them deliver high quality services to their clients. My role will be to help them realise their full potential and maximise the opportunities for them and their clients in this exciting industry.”

Auditel: the UK’s premier cost and purchase management consultancy

Auditel’s excellent reputation continues to enable us to deliver our quality services to our ever growing client base, already exceeding 3100 businesses and major organisations.

Auditel is proud that its Affiliates remain the specialists of choice for many of the consultants of our former strategic partner, Expense Reduction Analysts, who sub-contract our people to deliver the Auditel service to deal with complex areas for their clients too. This has enabled our work to feature in and support many of the ERA client success stories, including:

• ADAS
• F Hinds
• Fired Earth
• IBB Solicitors
• MMR Research
• PD Ports
• Target Express
• The Lowry

… and numerous others.

Congratulations IoD winners

Congratulations to all the winners at Friday’s inaugural National Director of the Year Awards, organised by the Institute of Directors and sponsored by Clydesdale Bank and Yorkshire Bank, Inenco, Custom House, Auditel, Arjowiggins-Conqueror and Visa Europe.  Nominees for the nine awards had all demonstrated exceptional leadership and motivational skills and had already won awards at Regional level before being put forward for the inaugural National competition. The winner of the overall award – Director of the Year – was Graham Honeyman CBE, Chief Executive Officer of Sheffield Forgemasters International, who also picked up two other awards at the Lancaster Hotel lunch, hosted by Michael Portillo and attended by special guest, Lord Sugar of Clapton. A tenth, Lifetime Achievement, award was made to Sir Terry Leahy, Cheif Executive of Tesco.

The full list of winners is:

Overall Director of the Year

• Winner – Graham Honeyman CBE, Sheffield Forgemasters International (Yorkshire)
• Runner up – Simon Bitcliffe, Webmart (South)

Young Director of the Year

• Winner – Cathy McCorry, Grafton Recruitment (Northern Ireland)
• Highly Commended – James Wollard, Polythene UK (South) and Joe Blackman, Green Ant Events, (Wales)

Public/Third Sector Director of the Year

• Winner – Mike Phillips, West Mercia Supplies (West Midlands)
• Highly Commended – Purnima Tanuku, National Day Nurseries Association (Yorkshire) and Mark Powles, Business Stream (Scotland)

Director of the Year for Environmental Leadership

• Winner – Mervyn D.Jones, Aquamarine Power (Scotland)
• Highly Commended – Julian Dennis C Dir, Wessex Water (South West) and Duncan Goose, Global Ethics (South)

Family Business Director of the Year

• Winner – Sarah Dunning, Westmorland (North West)
• Highly Commended – Jason Wouhra C Dir, East End Foods (West Midlands) and Stephen Blatchford, Chas. A. Blatchford & Sons (South)

Clydesdale Bank and Yorkshire Bank Investing for Growth Award

• Winner – Graham Honeyman CBE, Sheffield Forgemasters International (Yorkshire)

Global Director of the Year

• Winner – Graham Honeyman CBE, Sheffield Forgemasters International (Yorkshire)
• Highly Commended – Conor Walsh C Dir, Andor (Northern Ireland) and David Price CBE, Chemring Group PLC (South)                                   

Director of the Year – SME

• Winner – Simon Bitcliffe, Webmart (South)
• Highly Commended – Patricia O’Hagan, Core Systems NI (Northern Ireland) and Mark Box, Rieke Packaging Systems (East Midlands)

Director of the Year – Large Company (Sponsored by Auditel UK Ltd.)

• Winner – Ciaran Sheehan, Care Circle Group (Northern Ireland)
• Highly Commended – Helen Bunbury, Ogier (Jersey) and Stephen Martin, Clugston Group (East Midlands)

Auditel consultant completes The Great North Run

Daryn with his runners medal

Congratulations to Auditel consultant, Daryn Dodge, who completed the Great North Run on Sunday for the second year in a row. Last year’s experience was marred by a bad calf injury that slowed Daryn down but didn’t stop him finishing the 13.2 mile race in 3 hours 32 minutes. This year, however, he was in fighting form and, along with a friend who was running to raise funds for The Prostate Cancer Charity, finished in just 2 hours 45 minutes. As Daryn says, “I was really pleased with the run, knocking 47 minutes off of last year’s time. It just shows what you can do when you can stay injury free and stick to your training schedule.”

Public sector restrictions on consultants

One of our consultants had a meeting earlier this week with a charity client that receives funding from Central Government, via the Ministry of Defence. They tell us, however, that the MOD have recently been directed by the Government that they, and those under their direct influence, are no longer allowed to enter into any new consultancy agreements, an edict we assume now applies to all Government and public sector bodies.  This led to concern that, while the existing project would be allowed to run, they would not be able to expand the remit of the project to include  new areas of cost, something they were keen to do. However, when looking at the directive in more detail, it seems the ban applies to advisory services and not to “implementation“  for which the organisation does not have adequate in-house knowledge or resources.

For this reason, our client believes the Auditel service falls outside the ban as it goes far beyond the simple provision of advice and is clearly based on providing full implementation and ongoing management. What’s more, as a results-driven service, fees are not paid unless and until savings and benefits can be proven and, as an outsourced service, it is also specifically designed to fill the skills and knowledge gap many UK organisations experience in the area of cost and purchase management.

Paper prices rise steeply

We’ve just received an email from our stationery supplier notifying us that our contract price for 80gsm paper will be rising between 8%-12% from 1st October, with the prices of other stock going up by even more. This isn’t entirely unexpected, we’ve heard rumblings about the inevitability of sharp price rises all year, but it’s unwelcome nonetheless. The reason for the price hikes, apparently, is a set of unprecedented market conditions: a combination of decreasing volume year-on-year, challenging exchange rates, increased pulp prices and lower selling prices for cut paper across Europe compared with China and the USA mean mills are constricting  supply to Europe, pushing prices up. And it seems our suppliers expect the situation to continue until at least the end of this year.

The result, of course, for any business using paper – and I would guess that means pretty much any business of any size – will be a bigger stationery bill at the end of every month, unless they take steps to mitigate the higher prices. In the immediate short term, the quickest results would come from enouraging staff to value paper more highly – not easy when it’s been seen as such a cheap and disposable commodity for so long – by, for example, setting their printer to duplex (double-sided) printing as default, or by saving/filing their emails into folders for future reference rather than simply printing them out. And, of course, ensuring nobody feels they can take the odd ream home for their own use!

In the medium and long-term you should implement a thorough review of your paper purchasing policy. Are you with the right supplier? Could you use a cheaper brand? Could you buy in larger quantities? And so on. Of course, if you work with an Auditel cost and purchase management consultant to look after your stationery and business consumables overheads they will already carry out regular reviews and make recommendations to optimise your purchasing as an integral part of their ongoing management service. If not, and you’d like to contact your nearest Auditel consultant for more information about this issue, visit our website.

Helping Heroes: from Land’s End to Twickenham

Completing the challenge: arriving at Twickenham

Congratulations to our Auditel colleague, Laurence Fitch, who has completed this year’s Great British Bike Ride from Land’s End to Twickenham. Most of the 200 riders who started in Cornwall completed the gruelling 335-mile, 27-hour journey and  crossed the finish line in front of 70,000 cheering rugby fans, friends and family, in the process raising over £90,000 for Help for Heroes, The Rugby Players Association Benevolent Fund and the RFU Injured Players.

As Laurence says, “It was a lot harder than I expected especially coming through Devon & Cornwall but it was all worth it when we cycled into Twickenham to complete the route – 70,000 rugby fans standing to clap us around the pitch at Twickenham was something that I will never forget.  One very special moment was cycling the last ½ mile to the ground being led by a soldier who had lost both legs in Afghanistan on a specially adapted bike…made you really realise what it had all been about.”

If you want to support the riders who’ve completed this year’s challenge, you can still make a donation, or if you’ve been inspired to get on your bike for charity registration for next year’s event is already open.