How Management Consulting Firms Can Provide a New Path to Improved Profitability

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By Jim Dore, Vice President, Services Solutions, Chateau Energy Solutions

What is Management Consulting?

It is the practice of helping organizations to improve their overall performance and operations. Another way of looking at it, Management Consulting firms help solve problems for complex businesses. These businesses or organizations may use the services of a Consulting firm for a variety of reasons, including attaining objective advice from someone outside their organization and access to the consultants’ specialized field of expertise.

Management Consultants uses industry best practices to turn challenges into opportunities. They often bring their proprietary processes and procedures to provide the most efficient way to perform tasks and achieve goals.

Along with operational improvements, many Management Consulting firms may also assist organizations in creating strategies, analyzing processes, implementing technology, and initiating change management. Leading firms that provide these services are always looking for new ways to help their clients improve their operations and their profitability.

Chateau Energy Solutions can help Management Consulting firms with a new and critical operational area – energy.  We can help them start Making Energy an Asset® that helps pay for other upgrade initiatives, improves the bottom line, and delivers measurable contributions to sustainability program commitments.

Making Energy an Asset®

Management Consulting firms work with many types of companies across all vertical markets. They look at operating and capital budgets and find ways to save their clients’ money. The most forward thinking of these firms are beginning to look at how their clients buy energy.  As a starting point, these firms may make a suggestion to their clients to partner with an energy supply-side management firm. While this is a good start, it offers only a small percentage of what can really be achieved with energy management.  Part of the reason is that the expertise needed to design and deliver demand-side, or consumption related, energy management programs don’t reside in Management Consulting firms today. The best firms are finding partners with the requisite skills and experience to help them in that area.

Energy efficiency programs and projects can save clients 10% to 20% of their total annual energy spend. The key to delivering those kinds of results is actually having resources to design and build the improvements identified rather than just providing a report that often ends up dust covered on a shelf. A Management Consultant can help its clients truly Make Energy an Asset by working with the right partners to leverage the energy budget to fund investments that generate savings that exceed program costs. The energy savings gained from the funded energy efficiency projects can be reinvested back into the business.

Partner with an Energy Management Consultant

Partnering with a quality energy management company can provide significant benefits. Look for a company that provides a full-service consulting and implementation offering, including supply and demand-side management, and don’t forget to make sure they can quantify the impact on your clients’ sustainability programs. Management Consulting firms can partner with energy management companies to identify and implement new energy-efficient technology like LED lighting, variable frequency drives (VFDs), smart HVAC solutions, microgrids, or distributed energy resources (DERs).  These improvements can deliver ROIs anywhere from 20 – 40%, more than enough to fund themselves without requiring capital investment.  Smart clients can fund them out of their utility budget line items and make payments for financing alternatives, including leases and Energy Efficiency as-a-Service (EaaS) agreements.

Additional benefits that come with a well-qualified partner include leveraging utility rebates and incentives, increased maintenance savings, and improved building occupant comfort.

Key Take-Away:

  • Start thinking of Making Energy an Asset®
  • Management Consulting firms should pursue partnerships with qualified energy management partner.
  • Strategies should include energy audits and project implementation to deliver actual results. Supply-side optimization is a good start, but don’t stop there, or you are missing the big win.
  • Utility rebates and tax credits can be leveraged to help buy down the capital cost of these programs.
  • Financing alternatives are widely available to enable program implementation without requiring capital expense approval – these programs are truly self-funding.
  • Lower carbon emissions can have a monetary impact as well as support sustainability initiatives
  • Energy efficiency can have a significant long-term effect on costly maintenance and repair issues
  • Client retention and value-added services will make for a longer-term client relationship

As you can see, investing in a partnership with a qualified energy management company to address a portfolio’s energy building systems needs has been often overlooked by the Management Consulting sector. Management Consulting firms, with the support of a good demand-side partner, will help their clients get on the path to improved profitability in their facilities operations. This is the benefit of Making Energy an Asset®.

About the Author

Jim Dore is Vice President of Services Solutions at Chateau Energy Solutions, a world-class energy management solutions company. He’s been in the energy efficiency business for more than 25 years. Jim has extensive experience across multiple markets developing relationships with organizations to help build momentum toward a more energy efficient and sustainable future. He can be reached at Jim.Dore@ChateauES.com or on LinkedIn.

Chateau Energy SolutionsMaking Energy an Asset®

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