Tendering and Energy Procurement

Tendering and Energy Procurement is the process of identifying the most cost effective tariff based on the offers presented by bidding suppliers. In our experience, the use of an independent party in bilateral trading makes it possible to achieve considerably lower prices than the client is able to achieve itself. However, the greatest determinant of value when procuring energy is timing.

Blizzard has extensive experience in the UK energy markets, and its management team has hands-on experience dealing with every key supplier in the UK market with over £500m of energy contracts placed over the past five years. Blizzard’s continuous contact with the market and the volumes it represents undoubtedly sharpens competition between suppliers to benefit of Blizzard’s clients.

A well run and competitive tender process can generate significant savings for energy clients, provided that all major suppliers are included in the process and that the data used in the tender process is accurate and up to date. The use of detailed historical usage and expenditure data is essential, as is the capability of Blizzard’s UtilityTrak™ platform used to evaluate the tender submissions.

Blizzard will manage the entire tender and energy procurement process on a complete end-to-end basis. Its clients are regularly kept informed of progress until a winning bidder has been identified and action has been recommended, and Blizzard will also conduct an audit of the first month of supply to ensure conformity the agreed terms and conditions.
To support the sourcing and negotiation skills of Blizzard’s management team to ensure the best energy deals for its clients, Blizzard uses UtilityTrak™’s advanced software analysis tools to provide full analysis and reporting of the tender process.

UtilityTrak™ can analyse half hourly and non-half hourly electricity and natural gas accounts, and regularly handles anything from single accounts up to several hundred half hourly accounts. Performance when dealing with large volumes of data is vital and UtilityTrak™ has been refined and tuned for performance.

Blizzard’s tendering process involves the following actions, and which are processed via UtilityTrak™:

Export data to send to suppliers for tendering;
Enter any new tariffs based upon the offers received;
Analyse half hourly and non-half hourly electricity accounts;
Analyse 'fully inclusive' or 'pass through' prices, calculating the TUoS/DUoS charges, system losses, settlement charges and climate change levy where required;
Analyse individual accounts or group offers;
Identify the best supplier per account or best overall supplier for all accounts;
Analyse gas accounts.

Analysis via UtilityTrak™ can identify the best offer on an individual account basis or a group basis. This allows Blizzard to select the offers from either a number of different suppliers or the best overall group offer from a single supplier. Blizzard will not only identify the best offers on an individual basis but also the total group offer for each supplier.

A choice of analysis methods allows the calculation priority to be set to use either half hourly data, or a combination of invoices or base data allied to multiple load profiles that are used to apportion units into the time bands of each tariff.

A selection of reports present the results in varying levels of detail ranging from a global total of all Accounts for each tariff, down to a month by month detailed account analysis. Predicted future energy consumption for existing and new accounts can be entered, and graphical load profiles allow new patterns of consumption and "what-if" scenarios to be modelled.

Unless otherwise instructed, Blizzard approaches all suppliers with a valid UK supply license and we do not knowingly omit any supplier. We operate an open book procurement system, where we keep a complete audit trail via UtilityTrak™ and welcome our clients auditors to review the results.

We can also confirm that we operate a fully transparent fee policy, and encourage our clients to obtain direct confirmation from their new suppliers that Blizzard does not accept undisclosed commissions – unlike many energy consultants, contracted rates with suppliers are not inflated to hide consulting and other fees.