The Edrington Group

Edrington Group

Case study

Due to the complexity of our business requiring 24/7 multi-site catering, hospitality, board room, vending and housekeeping/cleaning requirements, the Group wanted to ascertain if we were getting the best value for money and appropriate service levels from our catering contractor.

Given the short lead in time for providing meaningful feedback and forward action plans, we decided to use the professional services of the Balance Partnership to provide us with an in depth appraisal of our total contractors spend and ways of reducing our catering cost without any loss of service levels.

Within a very short timescale, we were given a comprehensive and easily-readable report that not only highlighted short term savings and service improvements but more importantly provided a series of tangible ideas that would allow us to reshape our requirements. This process included putting our FM services out to competitive tender which the Balance Partnership managed on our behalf. The positive effect of this work allowed us to restructure our contractors management fee and discount earnings within a new contract and to put in place new area management reporting procedures for the day to day servicing of our locations.

A major benefit to the Group was that the Balance Partnership's fees represented a small part of our overall savings which we were then able to channel back into improving our staff catering facilities.

Client's comments

The Balance Partnership proved to be a very good choice for the Group. This was mainly because of their consultants' vast experience in dealing with confidential, complex, sensitive operational and contractual issues. We now enjoy a harmonious and cost effective relationship with our contractor and still use the Balance Partnership to assist with benchmarking our catering and housekeeping expenditure when required.
Lorna McDougall Group HR Manager