14 Suppliers Down to One – and £8,200 Saved Every Year
£8,200 saved every year. 14 suppliers reduced to one. And four months of stock held ready for delivery.
That's the result we've recently achieved for a new customer at Avon Controls.
The customer came to us spending around £20,000 a year on consumable parts, spread across 14 different suppliers.
By taking a proper look at what they were buying, how often they were buying it and what the whole process was actually costing them, we've managed to save them £7,000 a year on the products alone.
We also identified another £1,200 a year being spent on carriage charges.
But for me, the biggest improvement isn't just the £8,200 saving.
It's that what previously involved 14 different suppliers is now handled by one – Avon Controls.
It started with understanding the problem
The first thing we did was sit down with the customer.
Rather than simply asking for a list of products so we could quote against them, we wanted to understand how they were currently buying their consumables and where the problems were.
We obtained their monthly and annual usage figures covering the previous three years.
That gave us a much clearer picture.
The customer was spending approximately £20,000 every year, but that spend was being spread across 14 different suppliers.
That meant 14 suppliers to manage, multiple orders to raise, different websites and contacts to deal with, and numerous deliveries to keep track of.
It also uncovered a cost that can easily be overlooked.
£1,200 a year just on carriage.
Because lots of relatively small orders were being placed with different suppliers, the customer was spending approximately £1,200 every year just getting the products delivered.
We knew there had to be a better way.
We put everything in one place
We took the customer's complete list of regularly purchased consumables and built it into one straightforward spreadsheet.
For every item we included the relevant product information, pricing and a direct link to the product on the Avon Controls website.
It meant the customer no longer had to search through numerous websites or try to remember which supplier they normally bought a particular item from.
Everything was in one place.
But we weren't finished there.
We used their buying power properly
Having three years of purchasing history gave us something extremely useful – accurate annual volumes.
We could see what the customer actually used rather than trying to estimate what they might buy.
We took those annual quantities back to our suppliers and negotiated improved buying terms based on the customer's expected usage.
Those improved terms then allowed us to pass additional savings directly on to the customer.
Once we'd completed the exercise, we arranged another face-to-face meeting and went through the figures together.
Then we solved the stock problem too
Saving money was only part of what we wanted to achieve.
Once the customer agreed to the proposal, Avon Controls committed to holding approximately four months' worth of their regular consumables in stock.
As they buy the products, we replenish our stock to maintain roughly four months' cover.
So instead of waiting for products to arrive from numerous suppliers, their regularly used consumables are already sitting on our shelves.
That allows us to maintain typical delivery times of 1–2 days, while the customer doesn't have to carry all that additional stock themselves.
The end result?
£7,000
saved every year on product costs
£1,200
saved every year on carriage
14 → 1
suppliers reduced to one
4 months
of regular consumables held in stock by Avon Controls
1–2 days
typical delivery
And that's before putting a value on perhaps the biggest hidden saving of all:
Time.
This is a one-man purchasing team.
Every hour previously spent searching for products, comparing prices, raising orders with different suppliers, chasing deliveries and dealing with invoices is time that can now be spent doing something more productive.
Could we do the same for you?
This isn't something that only works for huge companies spending hundreds of thousands of pounds a year.
This customer was spending around £20,000 annually on these products.
The difference came from looking at that spend as a whole rather than treating every purchase as a separate order.
If your business regularly buys electrical or industrial consumables from several different suppliers, send us the list.
We'll look at what you're buying, how much you're using and what you're currently paying.
If we think we can consolidate it, reduce your costs and make your purchasing process easier, we'll show you the numbers.
No complicated sales pitch.
Just a proper look at what you're currently spending and whether we can improve it.
Call Avon Controls on 0117 427 8956
Email sales@avoncontrols.co.uk
