Haringey Council has used TEAM's outsourced utility bill validation and cost recovery service since 2006. The service means TEAM Bureau manage the entire processing life cycle for the Council's utility bills. During processing the bureau checks each utility bill against a minimum of 30 standard validators to ensure only valid bills are paid. In the process, data is captured using TEAM's Sigma software creating a central database of the Council's consumption information that can be accessed by both parties - the Bureau and the Council.
Haringey Council makes substantial savings thanks to TEAM
In 2010 TEAM Bureau recovered over £270,000 in overcharges from Haringey Council's utility suppliers. A further £7,725 worth of potential cost recoveries are currently being queried by TEAM - a leading supplier of energy management solutions.
Background
Sustainable Procurement Manager Ben Brown and the Energy and Sustainability Team are responsible for managing Haringey Council's energy contracts and its carbon reporting. This includes managing energy spend to budget, and identifying energy intensive council sites for future energy-efficiency projects. Their work supports the Council's ambitious target to reduce its carbon emissions by 40% by 2014/15. It also aims to ensure the Council complies with carbon reduction legislation. Councils that fail to comply with current legislation can be fined.
TEAM's bill validation cuts costs
Haringey Council has used TEAM's outsourced utility bill validation and cost recovery service since 2006. The service means TEAM Bureau manage the entire processing life cycle for the Council's utility bills. During processing the bureau checks each utility bill against a minimum of 30 standard validators to ensure only valid bills are paid. In the process, data is captured using TEAM's Sigma software creating a central database of the Council's consumption information that can be accessed by both parties - the Bureau and the Council.
The London Energy Project (LEP) based at Haringey Council suggests that bill validation can typically save an organisation between 1 - 3.5% of their annual energy costs. In 2010 TEAM Bureau processed over 14,000 utility invoices for Haringey Council and made £273,000 in cost recoveries on their behalf. A saving which equates to 3.4% of their total energy spend.
Automated processing saves money, time and resources
Manual bill entry can be a long and laborious process that can see many administrative steps being taken to invoice payment and archiving. Bills can be received, registered, copied, entered into a finance system, and then inputted into an Energy Management System. Often invoice payments are made with multiple individual cheques or BACS payments. Processed and paid bills are then archived in file storage.
The LEP estimates that each invoice processed in this way carries a minimum resource cost of £30. By using TEAM Bureau, Haringey Council reduces its need for invoice handling and manual data entry staff, as well as associated training and management costs.
The Bureau also produces electronic billing statements for the Council that recharge utilities to specific council departments. They send these statements electronically directly to the Council's accounts system via a bespoke Accounts Link created by TEAM.
With TEAM Bureau processing and producing utility billing information, council staff can be re-deployed to complete other, more important tasks. This further saves them money, time and resources. The LEP estimates that Haringey Council can save up to £8.16 per bill in invoice-processing costs by using this TEAM service.
Sigma - a reliable data mining tool
Ben Brown comments, "There's no question the Council saves money using the Bureau service. But what is most useful to me and my team is how Sigma supports our energy management work on a day-to-day basis". The team can access Sigma at any time. They make regular use of the software to extract information for procurement, compliance reporting, budget monitoring, accruals and financial forecasting.
Sigma and Revolving Energy Funds
Recently, the team has started to use Sigma data to identify future energy consumption and cost savings that can be made in future departmental budgets. These are determined by running consumption reports to identify sites of intensive energy use, analysing utility billing data and running missing entries reports to check the accuracy of energy consumption and costs. These "future savings" mean working capital in future budgets can be ring-fenced and allocated to a Revolving Energy Fund (REF) - pots of additional monies that can fund further energy-efficiency projects.
Haringey Council currently has two REFs - one for schools and one for council properties. Council departments can apply to their relevant fund for an interest-free loan to pay for energy-saving projects they cannot finance out of their existing budget. Their loan repayments are linked to the energy savings made by implementing energy efficient solutions.
To date the Council's completed REF-funded projects include voltage optimisation, lighting upgrades and low emissivity ceilings. All projects support the Council's commitment to reduce its electricity, water, fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions, as well as demonstrating sustainable practices in the operation of council buildings and assets.
Ben Brown comments, "Again Sigma proves to be an extremely useful tool. Not only can we run the reports we want, when we want them, but they are a great visual tool to communicate successes like our REFprojects to stakeholders".
