Concerned with Monthly Business Expenses? Put a Cost Analyst on the Trail to Unearth Savings

In a Nutshell: Growing a business is an exercise in decision-making. But there’s no guarantee you’ll make the most cost-effective choices when choosing vendors and partners. You can research and take time away from your day-to-day responsibilities to find out. Or you can put P3 Cost Analysts on the job. Since 1991, P3 Cost Analysts has helped companies optimize spending on utility, telecom, waste and recycling, and merchant processing. It also helps businesses save on uniform/linen, managed print, shipping, and property taxes. If you think you’re shelling out more than you need to (and even if you don’t), P3 Cost Analysts can help you know for sure. And if P3 can’t improve your bottom line, you walk away without paying a dime.

If you’re a business owner or manager, you know you’ve got to spend money to make money. You spend on infrastructure and employees, of course, but also on vendor and partner relationships to get things done outside your expertise.

Think utilities, telecom, waste and recycling, merchant processing, uniform/linen, managed print, and shipping. Most companies beyond the mom-and-pop stage purchase at least a few of those services to optimize how they do business.

The best vendor relationships are ongoing. It would be beautiful if you could just set them and forget them and focus on your work.

But you can’t because your vendors need to make a profit just as much as you do. Sure, they’re competing for your business, but once they have you in the fold, you’d need an army to figure out the ongoing cost/benefit numbers.

That’s true even for Fortune 500 companies with controller departments. Looking for outsized costs in the areas listed above would only be a small part of the controller’s responsibility, yet potential savings could run into the hundreds of thousands.

That’s why thousands of business owners and managers turn to P3 Cost Analysts to help them determine whether their vendor expenses are correct and cost-effective. The team at P3 uses decades of data and expertise to stay abreast of industry providers so their clients don’t have to.

And putting P3 on the hunt for potential savings won’t cost you a dime. Both parties walk away if P3 returns with a stellar report that you’re doing everything right. But more than 90% of the thousands of companies P3 has helped since 1991 have gained savings or refunds, all with assurance that their bills are accurate and cost-efficient.

“We have decades of data from vendors across the country to know the exact bottom line they’re willing to accept and where the errors and overcharges typically reside,” said Aaron Stahl, P3’s CEO. “And this is all our category experts do. We wouldn’t be in business if we weren’t good at it.”

The best business ideas fill demonstrated needs. Stahl started his career in construction during college and soon owned a waste and recycling consulting business focused on cost savings.

Over the years, as the firm developed relationships, clients asked for help in other areas. The company grew organically, taking on employees with various expertise to add more and more cost-reduction services.

It also grew through acquisition. In 2016, it partnered with a telecom and utility consulting firm that it later acquired. In 2018, it began a franchising operation. P3 franchisees operate nationwide, working with category experts, reaching out to prospects, and managing relationships.

“They’re out there on the front lines educating the clients on our suite of services and how we help people save money in a variety of overhead expense categories, as well as onboarding the client,” Stahl said.

Data and expertise combine to account for P3’s success. Category experts are laser-focused on their specialized vendor marketplaces.

They know the ins and outs of their part of the business and stay informed about trends and innovations.

Meanwhile, all data from every consultation goes in the hopper as institutional knowledge to apply to the next consultation.

Onboarding is highly efficient. P3 uses technology and artificial intelligence to seamlessly access invoices and contracts, and collect information to pass on to analysts. Data resides on secure platforms, and the business scope avoids sensitive corporate data such as medical records.

“When you focus on something every day, like our category experts do, and combine that with broad insights from tens of thousands of data points, you’re going to do cost analysis better than anyone,” Stahl said. “We believe every company out there needs our help, and the fact that we find savings at 90% of our clients confirms that.”

Enterprise-level firms may believe they have the staff to handle cost analysis in the categories P3 covers. But the combination of historical data and single-minded expertise puts P3 in a category by itself. Client involvement during engagements only averages about three hours. 

“It’s all we do day in and day out,” Stahl said.

Stahl said the worst-case scenario for a client after spending that time with P3 is learning they’re optimizing their vendor relationships and that P3 can’t help them with anything.

“It’s not a bad result — they still get experts reviewing everything, and they can sleep well knowing there’s no excess spending in the system,” Stahl said.

But excesses hide in the strangest places. P3’s merchant processing clients are often B2B firms with complex purchasing and fee-clearance challenges. Many believe the rate they receive from their merchant processor determines the bottom line, but Stahl knows from experience it’s just the tip of the iceberg.

But interchange padding, transaction clearance levels, virtual terminals, gateways, and other variables cloud the picture. It might not mean much if the average transaction is a $12 bar tab, but costs mount when the client regularly takes $50,000 orders for metal pipe over the phone.

The ideal scenario for P3 is holistic. The company is more likely to find savings for a client when examining the full range of vendor relationships.

But P3 never gets into the weeds with how you run your business. It’s not a business optimization service or strategic consultant. It stays in its lane, working with invoicing and contract data, and finds opportunities that may not have seemed obvious.

“Anytime we can go to a client and look at more than one category at once, we’re upping the opportunity to help them and make their return on their time even more valuable,” Stahl said.

The kicker is that working with P3 doesn’t have to be one-and-done. The best utilization is through ongoing monitoring. The initial P3 audit uncovers as many past errors as possible and secures the best rates and contracts moving forward.

That’s when expense monitoring comes into play. In most categories P3 covers, vendor shenanigans can occur where vendors may not be particularly worried about what the contract says.

A vendor might jack up the price of a mop handle by a dime, a trash collection price by $10, or magically introduce interchange complications that weren’t supposed to be there. Monitoring monthly expenses and watching for potential changes is a big part of what P3 does.

That said, flexibility is a hallmark at P3. Some clients want everything cleaned up and the benchmarking data for their teams to use. Others may consult P3 to prepare for a sale or acquisition. Stahl said all companies in growth mode should strongly consider bringing P3 on board for the long term. The results are worth it.

“The level of service we can provide depends on the client’s interests,” Stahl said. “Because of our ongoing support, we have clients who have been with us since the company’s inception.”

Potential savings vary according to the category. There’s usually surplus spending in waste management, uniforms and linen, merchant processing, and managed print. Working with a high-rise building on utilities presents an opportunity. But the returns can be much greater when auditing utilities for a large manufacturer, where tariff and tax situations and other complexities can lead P3 experts to find money.

Stahl said many potential customers are skeptical they need P3’s services. The tipping point may come when managers see expenses creep up or budget needs materialize. That’s when a no-risk consultation with P3 becomes imperative.

“The only question is whether three hours of your time is worth potentially finding tens to hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars in savings for your organization,” Stahl said.