Showing You The Money!

Venners characterise their new consultancy service as ‘following and showing you the money.’ Respecting the skillset of employees, they point out that it’s impossible to objectively analyse your own business in the same way an external expert can, even if it were possible to replicate their cross-sector skills and experience.

Venners Consultants have defined eighteen critical areas for improving profit and control. The in depth consultancy pinpoints issues, opportunities and solutions, and finds ways of improving already ‘good’ process across the entire spectrum of a hospitality business.

The scope of food consultancy projects has been wide and varied ranging from reducing food costs by 5% within 2 months for a family run hotel – by identifying areas of improvement, implementing a detailed action plan and mentoring the team to convert and bank the full difference; to saving a 4 star airport hotel operator £44K in food costs per year with just two days of intensive analysis – with such clients now laughing all the way to the bank.

Health & Safety is no longer just an audit process it’s also become a way of controlling cost. The ‘critical areas’ aren’t quite the same as food and beverage, but the practice of ‘following’ a journey is similar. Better risk management reduces compensation payouts and insurance premiums. One small hotel group, classed as high risk by insurers, reduced their premiums by £8k pa by using Venners Consulting.

Large companies servicing major events and festivals have improved like for like margins by 8%. Consultation identifies and closes operational loopholes to maximise profit, whilst Venners Event team address the challenge of a temporary workforce with staff monitoring and immediate stock-to-cash data.

Reporting, whatever the brief, provides an accurate, independent reflection of a business and its monetary position as a minimum. Venners say every instance of consulting they have completed so far, offers a potential return on investment of between 3 and 10% – the implementation is down to the operator of course.

Eradicating stock and cash fraud is one of the eighteen ‘critical areas.’ Often operators find it difficult to admit the degree to which they are victims of fraud let alone identify the persons responsible and deal with them. In an effort to highlight limitless, unimaginable exposure to fraud, Venners describe the below cases, which required specialist intervention to identify and solve. We would encourage all operators to consider whether they have enough systems in place to prevent or catch a thief.

The ‘perfect’ pub, that was in fact victim of a systemic £2m fraud operation running for ten years; a frightening example to multi site operators, of the dark possibilities of fraud.

A reliable and trusted deputy manager who now serves as a reminder to never underestimate the sheer audacity of some people, after unnervingly walking away with £40k in cash.

A bit of under ringing here, the odd staff drinks there, a free drink for a friend. Sound familiar? Who would have thought that could all add up to £44,700 in annualised losses?