- Home
- /
- Success Stories
Success Stories
Success Stories & Testimonials
Our customers always come first. To find out more about how we help organisations like yours, see below for success stories, directly from our members.
UTILITIES
Haven House Hospice and Focus Energy
- I have been very impressed with their professionalism and high standards of customer service. We have developed an excellent working partnership with Focus and I would absolutely recommend them.
- Liz Cody, Haven House Hospice
- Cost reduction of 21% on gas expenditure
- Saving in excess of £6900
Haven House Hospice were looking to simplify their contracts and invoicing. They wanted to change the multiple energy supply contracts they had in place to have one common end date and at the same time achieve cost reductions. They thought this would be impossible as it was something that too complicated to resolve.
As Focus Group are an HQP Partner, the team at Haven House were reassured they were dealing with a trusted supplier, knowing that all the due diligence and checks had already been completed by HQP’s procurement experts.
Since working with Focus Energy, all the contracts have been brought into one common end date and they’ve benefited from a cost reduction of 21% on their gas expenditure, providing them with a saving in excess of £6900 across the term. Furthermore, Focus Energy were able to secure further reductions on their electricity supplies, on some very competitive historical pricing.
As part of the ongoing account management, the team at Focus Energy have been able to review various billing issues that ensure they are paying the correct level of VAT and not unnecessarily overpaying.
More Success Stories from our Members
- “I’ve just secured gas supply with focus for 2022-2025, saving us £4k (£400 cheaper than the incumbent). Very happy with the service so far. Focus has never let me down to date!”
Alice Round, Procurement Manager - “Haven House Children’s Hospice has been a member of Hospice Quality Partnership since its inception. Through supplier partnerships secured by HQP, we have saved more than our membership fee every year since and in 2018/9 alone saved £12k against comparable quotes on work to compartmentalise our loft space for fire reasons, work that was subsequently carried out to very high quality and on time. We would encourage other hospices to join, not least as the more that join, the greater the purchasing power that HQP can wield.”
Mike Palfreman, Chief Executive, Haven House Children’s Hospice - “Treetops Hospice moved to PIB Risk Management in 2008 and immediately made significant savings on our insurance premiums. Since then we have received an exemplary service and the premiums paid have remained at a very competitive level. When a claim has been made it has been dealt with efficiently and funds arising have been received promptly. I would recommend PIB Risk management to any Hospice”
Rebecca Bostock - Treetops Hospice - “I want to say how impressed I am with Andrew Rumsey, who is our account manager at Focus. He is so responsive to emails and always helpful. It’s all too easy to complain when things don’t go to plan so I wanted to flag this up as he really does give great service.”
Cheryl Webster, Support Services Manager, Treetops Hospice Care - “I Want Great Care works really well. They do all the number crunching which saves time and costs. It is easy to underestimate the work involved and so unit saving is helpful. It is fully transparent and can show results”
Jane Naismith, St Joseph’s Hospice -
As an operational manager IWGC has proven to be very useful in relation to managing feedback from our patients and families – having the ability to individualise the services that are reported on through the unique codes also provides the ability to report to the teams and give feedback to our teams directly.
To create new services is very easy and to generate new codes and the paper feedback forms again is very simple. Our users of the services have also reported back to us that they find inputting their feedback electronically very straightforward. In relation to using the data generated and reporting these through our contracts.
We are able to use the data to report within our quality reporting through our CCGs contracts and report through our own governance structures in Dorothy House. Our trustees and Executive Team certainly have the information regularly reported to them for the quality reporting. We also display the feedback and our responses on our inpatient unit.”
Karen Tudge, Head of Day Services, Dorothy House Hospice Care - “I’m realising this is going to completely revolutionise the whole training system at Thames Hospice, not just e-learning but managing our face-to-face learning for clinical staff and our clinical competency work. You can imagine the amount of work all of that produces, but we can automate it all on Relias.”
Danielle Maisey, Education Data and Administration Manager, Thames Hospice -
“As a Hospice we had been looking into different e-learning platforms for mandatory training for a while and struggled to find something that both educationally and financially met our needs. It wasn’t until we were introduced to Relias that we felt sure about a platform which would meet these. Relias offers an incredibly flexible platform which meets the needs of not only employees but also volunteers.
We were instantly impressed by the system itself which is user friendly and intuitive to use. A blended learning approach is adopted and particularly the use of audio and video is appealing. The content of the modules is up to date, regularly reviewed and, where we felt the content wasn’t meeting our needs entirely, this was easily addressed or we were given the option to add some of our own learning materials.
The platform is much more than just a virtual learning system for mandatory training, it has built in capabilities to add your own policies and procedures. A library of additional modules is available and again we found this of huge benefit for continuous professional development purposes. Equally, employees found it really useful for revalidation purposes as everybody has their own dashboard which allows for any other learning and training records to be added.
We were fully supported by the team at Relias with the initial set up and within a matter of weeks, with their help, all our historical data and records were added onto the system. The customer service is second to none and incredibly responsive and helpful. It is clear that at Relias they take pride in their relationships with their customers. We have regular contact with Relias and they have been supporting us with fine tuning the capabilities on the system and ensuring that we maximise its use.”
Maaike Vandeweghe, Greenwich & Bexley Community Hospice - “Sue Ryder selected Core Facilities after an exhaustive tender process as we felt them to be the best fit, most adaptable and cost effective supplier for our needs. They have proved themselves to be highly professional, reliable and knowledgeable in all their work so far, which included visiting all 450 Sue Ryder locations and creating a reliable asset list at each site. They have also been very agile in helping with the reopening of the shops, checking all sites were in a position to open as well as installing perspex guards at all sites”.
David White, Head Of Procurement for Sue Ryder - “I was very pleased with the attitude of your tradesmen and the way the work was carried out. They were courteous to our staff & users and reduced our operational disturbance to a minimum. Please convey my thanks to them. I look forward to working with your team on future suitable projects.”
Alan Johnson, Isabel Hospice -
“Since St Helena Hospice joined the Hospice Quality Partnership (HQP) and started actively using the framework agreements on offer we have saved well over £30,000 in direct savings alone. Whilst in that time we have managed to introduce new services and grow our income I can think of nothing else we have done that has actually improved our value for money and increased quality of service at the same time in such a straightforward and painless way.
Every time we have switched supplier to HQP the process has been smooth and easy.
Moving to a new energy provider hasn’t only delivered a direct financial benefit it has also reduced enormously the number of invoices we receive freeing valuable administrative time in both our Estates and Finance teams to focus on other priorities. We have also been encouraged to consider our energy efficiency more closely and our deriving further benefit from taking on board the advice on offer from our new supplier.
Our new insurance provider has not only saved us money but also increased the level of cover we have in the event of a future claim or problem. They have worked with us to improve our risk management processes which has provided greater assurance to our Board. We are also currently working with them to develop business continuity plans as an added value extra service that our previous supplier didn’t offer. Their expertise and support is helping us improve our efficiency and safety as well as our bottom line.
If you’re a partner of HQP but have yet to ensure the ‘buyers’ in your hospice are using the great deals on offer then what are you waiting for!”
Mark Jarman-Howe, Chief Executive, St Helena Hospice - “Focus Energy made the process seamless, they put together a compelling cost proposal with recommended options, which meant I had confidence that the recommendations were thoroughly researched so we could make the right choice for the DMH business. We made some immediate financial savings and will continue to do so over the next few years, along with time saved as the contract end dates now line up making our administrative process quicker and easier”.
Kenneth Snell, Head of Facilities Management - “DE Ford where introduced to the Douglas Macmillan Hospice through HQP ( Hospice Quality Partnership ) on a transparent broker fee rather than our previous commission basis. It was great to work with a company that had a good knowledge of how hospices work and this gave us the reassurance that our needs where being met. DE Ford audited our current insurance cover and made suggestions where needed to cover gaps or make improvements needed in our current cover. Not only where improvements made but we made savings equating to £11,520.07. On top of this as a HQP member we will benefit from future savings if our claims experience remains low at our next insurance renewal. We also have free access to an online Risk Management resource centre provided by D E Ford.”
Paul Munyard, Facilities Manager, Douglas Macmillan Hospice - “Countrywise have been one of the most proactive and professional suppliers during the recent pandemic. They maintained payment by account, while most others needed payment by credit card at the time of ordering, and delivered all orders within 1-2 days in full and without exception. Our Account Manager, Helen Kelly, has been quick to respond to any questions put to her and has helped to make the ordering process fast and efficient by stating what items were in stock or when they were due back in stock. They managed the distribution of the pandemic stock to allow all hospices to get a sufficient amount of stock when required rather than making empty promises and continually running out of stock. I believe the relationship with HQP and Countrywise has been hugely beneficial to Sue Ryder.”
David White, Head of Procurement and Purchase Ledger, Sue Ryder