Nuestra entrevista exclusiva al Socio Corporativo. En esta ocasión a Craig Henthorn, Operations Director de Expense Reduction Analysts

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Newton Freire, Country Director Diageo España y Portu-
galNewton Freire, Country Director Diageo España y
Portugal
Craig Henthorn,
Expense Reduction Analyst Operations Director
Established in 1992, Expense Reduction Analysts
(ERA) is a specialist expense management
consultancy focused on delivering improved
business performance to clients of all sizes in both
the private and public sectors. Operating in over 30
countries, Expense Reduction Analysts’700
consultants proved deep industry expertise in a
wide variety of expense categories, such as waste
management, insurance, transport, marketing costs,
bank charges, fleet management,
telecommunications and many others. Expense
Reduction Analysts’clients include thousands of
mid-sized companies and many well-known names.
ERA formed as a franchise organisation in the UK in
2006. The business was introduced into continental
Europe as a franchise concept and rolled out across
various countries – one of the first being Spain. In
Spain we have 34 businesses operating and across
mainland Europe we have over 280. All of our
business activity through mainland Europe is
supported from the UK. Spain is one of our top
three countries in terms of savings generated for
client organisations alongside Germany and Finland.
Our business has grown by over 20% every year
during the last three years and our targets are to
continue those levels of growth for the next five
years. We are optimistic that this can be achieved. To
enable this to continue in the Spanish market we
need to focus on increasing the number of
franchisees we have operating in Spain whilst
delivering excellent value to our current clients and
at the same time bringing in new ones.
What are the business benefits that ERA has
detected between Spain and the
United Kingdom?
ERA are a global cost reduction and supplier
management business operating in 17 countries in
mainland Europe – Spain is an important business
within that group. Due to our structure we are able
to take our best practice from any of our businesses
and demonstrate through communicating, ongoing
support and training how these can be used in the
Spanish market place. One of our most favourable
factors is therefore our structure and flexibility.
What are the barriers?
There aren’t any significant barriers for the business
between Spain and the UK.
How is the British Chamber of Commerce in Spain
of help to your business?
We view the British Chamber of Commerce in
Spain (BCCS) as a good fit for our organisation at
this stage of our development. As we are being
much more structured in our market approach we
are using the BCCS as a partner organisation to
increase our visibility in specific markets and find
specific industry expertise that can help us increase
our own capabilities. As we are a people and
relationship business we are pleased to be working
with the BCCS in putting together a program of
networking events that will leverage our existing
expertise whilst looking for new opportunities.
It appears that we are recovering from the global
economic crisis, was your business at all affected?
Despite year on year growth through our European
business, without doubt the economic crisis has
affected our business but not in the ways that you
may imagine. During times of economic stress,
companies will either adapt, change some of their
behaviours, or unfortunately lose their profitability
and go out of business. As ERA are a cost reduction
and supplier management business, we can help
companies return to profit or increase their
profits quicker and in a much more structured way
than they could if they were to manage that
themselves. So in principle ERA is a very useful
organisation whilst the economy is struggling.
Could you inform us of a current and relevant
Spanish development project?
Today one of our major challenges in Spain is to keep
the ERA business momentum going and growing in
terms of the savings realised and shared with our
clients. This is where we generate our income from,
client savings. As with all maturing businesses there
are cycles of growth and consolidation, however our
challenge is in how we take the experience in our
Spanish business and accelerate our learning and
growth. As a franchise operation that is an important
part of ERA as franchisors responsibility, assisted by
the local delivery of our services by our franchisees.
In Spain we are at a stage in our business
development where we have to become much more
focussed and targeted on specific business
sectors and use our deep industry knowledge as
specialists to offer our services to potential clients
with a much more relevant message and a highly
tailored service. Such an example is the wine
industry in Spain where we are targeting the wine
producers to understand their industry challenges
and develop a service tailored to their needs.
Talking about the future, what are your
predictions for your business in Spain?
Our business model is successful in the Spanish
market. There will be a much stronger emphasis on
targeting specific markets, continued development
of specialist knowledge and increasing the value
added proposition of our business. Our business
relationships with our clients, as a minimum, last
over the duration of project deliveries which are two
years. During that period it is important that we help
each of our clients realise each cost saving
opportunity available to them whilst introducing us
to their external business networks as trusted
advisors.
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We view the Chamber as a
good fit for our organisation
at this stage of our
development
“
”
We are using the Chamber as a partner organisation to increase
our visibility in specific markets
Craig Henthorn, Expense Reduction Analyst Operations Director
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”