Develin & Partners Ltd
Develin & Partners was founded in 1988. We specialise in cost management, helping our clients understand the nature and behaviour of their costs. This enables them to control costs better, and so improve profitability and shareholder value. Our clients include Retail, Distribution, Supply Chains, Utilities, Universities, Colleges, Insurance Companies, Banks, NHS, Private Healthcare, Manufacturing, Oil, Food, Drink, Shared Services, Profesional Institutes, Television, Local Authorities, Construction, Telecomms.
Our services focus on the following:
1. Cost Reduction and Service Level, Process & Working Capital Improvement
The chosen approach is drawn from a range of techniques such as: business process reengineering, lean & system thinking, organisation re-structuring. We work with client teams to implement the techniques that deliver sustainable improvements.
2. Cost Modelling and Profitability Improvement
We determine accurate costing of activities, processes, outputs, products, services and customers to focus attention on where and how money is made or lost, and on internal & external charging and pricing strategies. We combine experience and an exceptional activity based cost modelling tool (www.costperform.co.uk) to provide clients with insights into the dynamics of costs and their drivers.
Our style
All of our approaches rely on strong client participation. Senior and middle managers and staff are actively involved and work with us to analyse the current organisation and in developing the recommendations. This also ensures a high level of knowledge transfer of our approaches and experience so that clients become confident and able to continue to improve without external support. All our projects demand that our consultants are fully capable of applying a range of abilities from facilitation through to complex and technical analysis, including the interpretation of findings and the development of insights and recommendations.
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Corporate social responsibility Diversity Supplier Environmental policy clients
- Abacus Corporate Services
- ABB
- Abbey Life
- ACCO Europe
- AEA Technology
- Allied Domecq
- AMP
- Anglia Ruskin University
- AstraZeneca
- Aventis Pharma
- Avon Rubber
- AXA
- BAe Systems
- BBC Production
- BBC Worldwide
- BP Chemicals, Exploration
- BRE
- BT Group
- Cert Octavian
- City University
- Co-operative Bank
- Co-operative Retail Services
- Comag
- Corus
- De La Rue
- DHL Worldwide
- Echo Managed Services
- Edinburgh Napier University
- Edinburgh’s Telford College
- Equifax
- Experian
- Geest
- GlaxoSmithKline
- Grattan
- Greene King
- Guardian Newspapers
- Heriot Watt University
- JW Lees
- Kelda Group
- LGC
- Middlesex University
- NHS
- Northampton University
- Nuffield Hospitals Group
- Perot Systems
- Prudential
- Royal & SunAlliance
- Scottish Courage
- SEPA
- Severn Trent Systems
- Severn Trent Water
- SG Hambros
- Stryker
- Surrey University
- United Utilities
- University of Gloucestershire
- Vertex Data Science
- Vesuvius Premier
- Waitrose
- Walter Alexander
- Wholesale Fittings
- Zurich Insurance
case studies
Reducing Costs and Improving Services in an NHS hospital and local PCTsIn just three months it had a robust plan for a joined-up local health economy to deliver better patient care and cost efficiency which had the support and commitment of the staff working in the trusts.
Reducing costs and enhancing customer service levelsWithin 12 months, the BPR project delivered dramatic benefits.Administration costs reduced by 26% , service levels were achieving best in class and a net outflow becoming a net inflow with retention rates improving by 10%.
Working capital improvements driven by activity and milestone measuresThe key was to understand the company’s as well as the customers’ and suppliers’ activity levels and milestones achievements. Making improvements then had a significant impact on working capital.
What was needed was a complete set of new measures that looked much closer at the ‘activity levels’ and ‘milestones’...
Finding the hidden lost value in Work in ProgressOnly by getting to grips with and understanding the more complex root causes was the company able to avert WIP re-valuations and the impact this would have had on valuations of debtors and payables.
In the construction sector it is common practice to raise invoices, payment milestones, certificates and so forth where deduction of a retention is for...
Product & Customer Profitability Analysis – a vital tool for strategic planningCool heads decided that a strategic decision made in haste and influenced by anecdote might be unwise. A thorough analysis of profitability for all the products and customers was agreed to be the best way forward.
Achieving cost reduction and service level improvements – at the same timeOn the one hand making cost cuts was relatively easy – spend less and wait for the consequences! On the other spend more to enhance service levels and hope that things are put right.
What didn’t appear so easy to do was to look at how to reduce costs by making the work and processes more effective and then selectively rebalancing savings...
Rolling Forecasts and Budgeting underpin the whole businessThe budgeting process took several months to complete. It was a period of intense activity that dominated their working lives. But, despite the effort, it didn’t lead to growth or profitability. Instead, it led to confusion.
Using Activity Based Costing for accurate costing of shared servicesIn the central shared functions it needed to know the costs of providing services to business units in order to enable accurate internal charging and in order to simulate the costs of future demands.
In the Business Units it needed to know the costs, and hence the profitability, of providing products and services to customer. This information could...
Modernising & redesigning university administrative processesThe questions facing the university’s management group were “How can we respond to all the demands without costs spiralling out of control? How can we keep administrative costs down and operate as efficiently as possible?”
Over the years, administration and support processes had grown both in size and complexity. However, growth...
Using Activity Based Costing to uncover gross margin erosionThe ABC analysis modelled distribution costs and the ‘selling operation’ through to the tills. The result, after three months, identified opportunities to increase the current overall net margin by 17% - many millions of pounds.
Using Activity Based Costing to determine treatment and customer profitabilityThe ABC model of net product and customer profitability delivered pricing strategies for different markets, evaluated financial risk when bidding for contracts and optimised the operating margin of different case mixes and volumes of business.
Using Activity Based Cost analysis to increase customer profitabilityThe ABC model found 15% of domestic customers were unprofitable, reducing overall profitability by £10m a year. And worryingly, what if the most profitable 40% of customers were attracted to competitors?
Saving £millions by re-engineering processesThe three month project defined 27 key changes that, together, added £60 million to the bottom line. Opportunities to increase profits included reductions in process costs, improved margins and increased sales volumes.
Drastic cost reduction while improving processes and service levelsWithin three months, an action plan to reduce resources by over 20 per cent had been prepared, and implementation started. Within nine months, all processes had been re-engineered, and a new organisation structure put in place.
Improving product and customer profitability using activity based costingWithin four months, the company announced a £0.75million improvement to the bottom line, cost reduction initiatives of 20% of central overhead, a lift in profitable products sales and suspension of £4.5million investment in loss-making products.
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