As every good businessperson knows, there are three main ways to increase your profit: increase your prices, sell more, or reduce costs.

But in today’s context of rampant inflation, increasing prices is an option most businesses have already exhausted.  

So what about the other two options? Which is the most effective at making a business more profitable in these challenging times?

Saving energy vs. increasing revenue

 It may seem counterintuitive, but taking action to cut your energy costs can actually be far more efficient at increasing profit than improving your sales performance (and requires less effort too, if you take your data seriously). 

Even a small energy efficiency saving can make a huge difference to your bottom line. For business with a 5% profit margin, just a small £500 energy saving would make as much annual profit as £10,000 of extra sales. And unlike sales, energy efficiency measures aren’t just for Christmas – they continue to pay back year after year.

The good news is that if you have the right data to make targeted interventions, a £500 saving without any upfront capital investment is easily achievable for the vast majority of businesses. It’s also far easier than finding thousands in extra sales every year during a recession!

 Even in small businesses, large amounts of power can often be consumed for no reason. Wasteful use of heating or lighting, appliances being left on unnecessarily, old equipment in need of maintenance… the list goes on and on. Cutting out these inefficiencies can have a massive impact on energy bills.

And there’s another added benefit too – every kWh saved means fewer carbon emissions emitted into the atmosphere, helping businesses and the planet on the way to net zero.

How to find the energy for energy efficiency 

Source: Photo by Daria Nepriakhina 🇺🇦 on Unsplash

If it’s that easy, why are so many businesses still not looking closely at their energy efficiency.

The root of the problem isn’t necessarily just a lack of funds. Many energy efficiency measures cost nothing or pay back incredibly quickly. Even larger capex investments can often be financed in such a way that energy savings are higher than your repayments.

When you get down to the nitty gritty, it’s actually a lack of time and resources to know how to go about energy saving that’s the key barrier for most businesses. When people are up against the wall with very little headspace for forward planning, the energy to think about energy is in short supply.

Even with a dedicated energy or sustainability manager, knowing what to do in what order, and how, is a difficult job. Should a restaurant focus on its air conditioning or is refrigeration a bigger issue? Should a factory upgrade a piece of equipment or does it just need maintenance? Could appliances be used more efficiently by staff in the first place? Which operating procedures need to be looked at?

The answers to these questions can all be found by monitoring and managing energy intelligently. With the right data and analysis, you can work out where the biggest pain points are, what actions will have the biggest impact and how to get the best return on your investment. OAK is your solution to all these questions and more.

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So there you have it. Take some pressure of your sales team by turning your attention to energy efficiency.

Get in touch today for a free demo: Welcome | OAK Network (oak-network.com)