Auditel Franchise Partner Sean Connaughton hails the impact of Auditel’s Carbon Solutions

In late October 2021, Sean Connaughton organised a webinar, primarily using social media and email invitations to business directors of organisations in Scotland. It attracted over 70 attendees and led to multiple meetings through November and into early 2022, the majority of which are still in progress.

So far, Sean has signed up five new clients, for whom he will manage their carbon management planning, in line with the British Standards Institute (BSI) verified PAS 2060 standard.

The standard demands a complete process encompassing ‘Measuring, reducing, offsetting and verifying’ to demonstrate ‘carbon neutrality’.

At the end of the process, typically over a one year period, the whole cycle restarts, providing long-term clients and subsequent income streams.

Auditel can provide a complete service to work through the entire process, and a huge and unique advantage to clients in engaging Auditel, is that the whole process can effectively become ‘self funding’ through the procurement savings and cost management improvements Auditel can achieve in separate projects undertaken for the organisation alongside the carbon management process. An incredibly powerful proposition.

Auditel have decades of experience in the energy sector and have undertaken large numbers of projects involved with sustainability, energy from waste, off-grid energy projects, renewables, and waste management, and have a team of dedicated experts within the organisation that formed Auditel’s ‘Carbon Strategy Group’ several years ago.

Sean was able to harness the adapted positioning of Auditel’s ‘Cost, Procurement and Carbon Solutions’ to lead client engagement through carbon, more so than procurement, as Auditel recognise the need of all organisations to address sustainability challenges within their business for an array of different reasons.

Sean explains “There are lots of different drivers for businesses to establish their carbon footprint and set out a carbon management plan. The difficulty is that they lack the understanding, time and resource to get this process in place in the first place, let alone to complete it. Many are creating an expensive employment position which still relies on an individual to have the all-round knowledge and expertise to oversee the entire process. By engaging Auditel, they tap into a huge resource of knowledge and expertise, and the comparative cost compared to employing a staff member is a fraction. Better still, through Auditel, we can examine their indirect expenditure too, saving them a huge amount of money, that can be used to fund the projects, purchase offsets, and invest elsewhere in the business and increase profitability.”

Sean continues “There are other factors that are prompting organisations to change. The pressure of customer expectations that a business or brand can demonstrate it is focussed on sustainability is important. Other businesses may supply goods or services to other organisations, and those organisations need to measure the carbon emissions in their supply chain. In effect, this means businesses that don’t have a carbon management plan in place themselves will increasingly be losing out on business to competitors that do.”

He advises “I am currently extremely busy in the process of working through meetings, doing scoping projects, creating and presenting proposals, and undertaking the project work to create the initial part of each process, the carbon footprint report – and all of this stemmed from just one webinar!”

Sean adds “In addition to the base retainer, there are separate projects involved in the carbon reduction process, and then the broader procurement projects on top too, for which this can also open up significant income opportunities.  Needless to say, I’m hugely excited!”

“What’s so satisfying is that my success is from delivering projects that make a positive difference for my clients, and impact very positively on the future of the planet too. I feel very good about that. I can only say that for people considering starting a business, the Auditel opportunity is in an incredible position right now. I would love to see more Auditel colleagues to be collaborating with in the months and years to come, especially up here in Scotland though this opportunity is vast everywhere in the UK.”

Sean is not the only Auditel Franchise Partner benefitting. Across the UK, many others in the network are reporting similar successes.

Auditel ensures all franchise partners attend, and pass, a separate five-day training course on carbon solutions. By completing the training, they achieve ‘BSI Associate Consultant’ status too, adding further credibility to their Auditel status.

To find out more about Auditel’s Carbon Solutions and to explore how you can succeed in self-employment with Auditel, click here.