The Company
Manchester Care provides care to over 2,000 service users either in the home or in one of their residences throughout Manchester and the North. They manage 11 residential care homes and 4 housing schemes through 3 administrative sites, generating an annual revenue of £13 million, and employing some 1,000 personnel.
The issues
Energy management, heating & maintenance support, telephone and mobile phone cost analysis were rapidly becoming too great a workload to manage internally, as the company implemented its innovative care provision programme. Couple this pressure with the opening of three new homes in the last two years and it was no surprise that the proposal to outsource cost monitoring to Beaconplus was rapidly accepted.
What we did
We performed a detailed audit of all utilities and the heating & maintenance contracts, identifying and implementing appropriate historic and future cost savings.
We re-negotiated a new mobile phone contract and set up a single point of contact for all mobile phone queries.
We removed redundant telephone lines and simplified billing.
We checked all monthly bills for utility, telecom and maintenance services, and resolved issues directly with suppliers on behalf of Manchester Care.
We created a monthly breakdown of specific costs to fit Manchester Care’s central accounting system.
We attended monthly meetings with heating and maintenance suppliers as advisors and, where appropriate, we led the contract negotiations.
The result
Within 2 months of appointment we had identified annual savings of £44,000 across telecommunications and energy. After the first year, the predicted saving has grown to over £103,000.
Today, we work on a daily basis with Manchester Care: answering ad-hoc queries; approving invoices for payment; ordering phone lines and fixing mobile issues.
In the immediate future we will also be addressing issues across broader energy management practices.
