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However, most businesses do not understand how to lower the cost of utilities before conservation principals are applied. Rate issues and other adjustable billing factors are simply not understood or monitored by over 90% of businesses today. Utilities 101^© leads you step by step through that process.

Utilities 101^© provides you with the following :

• Opportunity checklists
• Definitions to key billing terms
• Detailed explanations of how opportunities can lower utility bills
• How to implement rate changes and other opportunities "in-house"
• How to determine when an outside analyst is needed
• Examples of spreadsheets that can quickly quantify savings opportunities

Read the following excerpt from Utilities 101^© to get a taste for the manual . . .

The Basics
There are a few things that you, as a business owner or the person responsible for utility costs, can do to assure that you are being charged properly and in accordance with what is available to you relative to utility rates and other factors regarding your utility bills. Each utility category such as electricity, natural gas, water/sewer/storm and refuse have specific types of potential savings. As you know, utility bills are not always easy to decipher. Most businesses, historically, have paid their utility bills on the basic assumption that the utility company exists for the common good of all and since it is a public entity and regulated everything is "OK". Of course, not being able to understand a utility bill helps in accepting that basic assumption.

The assumption that utility companies operate fairly due to regulation and being a public entity is a fair assumption to make. The assumption that they don't make mistakes, obviously, is not a fair assumption to make. They do make mistakes because they are operated by people and people can and always will make mistakes.

Billing errors based on computations are very rare, due to the advent of computers. However the raw data that is entered is done so manually, if it is not electronically monitored and entered. This is just one area where billing errors can occur. Transposition is a common error. (Inverted numbers recorded by meter readers or data entry personnel.)

Getting Started
You, as the person responsible for utility cost control for your company, are moving into an area of cost control for your business that in the past has been controlled basically from a view of consumption rather than from cost of service. In other words, businesses tend to react to utility costs and attempt to control levels of consumption rather than taking a more aggressive and pro-active approach toward their utility costs. There is much that can and should be done before you pay a utility bill. Controlling consumption will then have a greater effect on reducing utility costs.

This program as a whole is designed to help businesses become more pro-active in their approach to their utility costs. Utilities 101^© will point out those areas that businesses can monitor themselves on an ongoing basis without the assistance of an outside professional. It will also point out areas where the need for help from the utility provider or an outside professional would be beneficial. The self-check items alone can, potentially, save a business hundreds or thousands of dollars over time by allowing corrective action to be taken immediately.

Future Benefits
A very important benefit of maintaining good historical data regarding your utility costs is the advantage a business can gain by being prepared for the advent of deregulation within the natural gas and electricity utility industries. A business will then be able to intelligently shop for these utilities because they will have good historical data on which to base sound economic decisions.

It is important for you to understand that the natural gas and electricity industries are in the process of becoming deregulated much the same way that the telephone industry has become deregulated. This means that you will have natural gas and electricity brokers ("re-sellers"), in addition to the present utility companies, vying for your utility dollars with respect to each utility.

Utility companies, as you know them now, will be in the business of maintaining the "Grid". They and other new "re-sellers" will then be competitively marketing the "commodity" (i.e. natural gas, electricity) to you much the same way as Long Distance "re-sellers" buy blocks of "time" and then re-sell them to individuals and businesses.

The decision from whom to purchase the "commodity" should be the result of sound economic considerations. This requires the right kind of historical data and analysis of such data to reach an intelligent decision. (Instead of succumbing to an emotional sales pitch.) A functional software program will provide you with the historical data that will be necessary when comparing the inevitable wave of utility commodity vendors that will soon be knocking at your door. This is going to give you the advantage from the beginning. We should all learn a lesson from the deregulation of the telephone industry with regard to the confusion surrounding the decision-making process in carrier service selection.

You have the ability to select and/or negotiate a "better" rate, just as easily as anyone else, if given the basic information to do so. Businesses need to learn how to seek proper expert help with making the right choices regarding their rates. It is important for you to understand that great savings can be gained, before they are lost forever, by reviewing your rates on a regular basis to make sure they are competitive ones.

No one in the market place today is going to guarantee that you are on the "best" rate available. Not even a large utility analysis service will do so. Since it has always been and will continue to be, ultimately, your decision to select the best rate, why not learn how to make those decisions and reap the benefits of having done so?

Armed with the basics and knowing that there is expert support for you to draw upon will afford you and your company the opportunity to experience the full benefits of taking control of your utility expenditures in a pro-active manner.

Worksheets
Included in Utilities 101^© are critical checklists and worksheets for each utility. Each set of checklists and worksheets are designed to help you identify and determine areas of potential cost savings relative to the utilities being monitored. It starts with basic factors of each utility bill which you or other staff can check yourself to assure that correct procedures and charges are being assessed based on these factors. Each worksheet also includes more specific questions with explanations as to what the specific factors of each question means.