Sustainable Energy Solutions (SES) helps businesses buy energy, reduce their energy consumption and costs, and achieve long-term savings. SES is a niche consulting firm specialising in energy procurement. SES provides a suite of energy solutions to medium and large business customers across all industry sectors. For over 15 years, SES has been helping clients take control of their energy costs by securing competitive electricity and gas contracts for their businesses or sites anywhere in Australia.

The mission of SES is to educate and prepare medium and large businesses to address the impact of energy on their businesses and develop strategies to enable them to take control of their energy costs effectively. At the heart of SES’s business are three core values: Excellence, Positive Energy, and Collaboration. The vision of SES is to be an industry leader in providing energy solutions to empower users to understand, control, and minimise their energy spending and to enable both our clients and SES to remain profitable during the transition to a sustainable energy future.

SES decided to build on their past and ongoing client successes by focusing in on one of their company values, ‘Excellence’. Having built up an industry-leading reputation over 15+ years in the highly competitive energy sector, SES needed to think creatively and act strategically to take the company to the next level. They identified key areas of improvement that spanned the entire business and could be divided into three categories: Evolving the Client Experience; Improving Internal Business Processes; Maintaining a Supportive Foundation.

There is a continual need for SES energy experts to track the market and provide up-to-date advice to clients. The diverse client portfolio at SES ranges across various industry sectors, so no two clients—and no two days in the market—are the same. It was essential for the SES Team to evaluate the business from end to end to identify ways to take the client experience up to the next level. Client feedback revealed that SES clients wanted to know key industry news and market movements, so SES created some new communication campaigns to deliver this to clients.

SES identified several internal processes to clean up, expand or overhaul entirely. The Marketing Team recognised a need to maintain the internal client databases to achieve the best possible results, alongside a thorough review of their entire Marketing funnel, which included a refresh of the SES website. The team also began exploring automation and expanding their suite of internal templates to free up crucial time for Account Managers to focus on speaking with clients. This ultimately improved the client experience as clients were receiving more consistent communication. Streamlining and consolidating knowledge and processes across the different teams at SES has also improved internal communication, enabling SES to deliver service excellence to clients.

SES has always believed that its biggest asset is its people. The Leadership Team understood that if clients were expecting an above-and-beyond level of service excellence, the SES team required a strong and supportive foundation and culture to deliver those results consistently. SES is proud of creating just such an environment, and its 2024 focus on ‘excellence’ and the efforts to ‘up their game’ meant that this quality would remain just as important and not be compromised. Quarterly team lunches, annual minigame competitions, a new and brighter office, and flexible work schedules are ways the SES team looks after itself and ensures a positive and motivating work environment.

Although the year is far from over, SES is already confidently kicking goals and hitting targets. SES has hit the ground running, surpassing their 2023 yearly revenue targets and 2024 Q1 targets. SES now ranks in the top 3 partners (by number of clients and overall volume) for the two largest commercial and industrial energy suppliers in the market, and they continue to hold this position coming into 2024. SES currently serves 1465 organisations and a total of 10,009 sites across Australia. In 2023, SES procured 25 solar projects with a combined capacity of 4.5 MW. These are just some of the tangible markers of SES’s recent successes.

SES has consistently delivered service excellence for over 15 years to some of Australia’s leading businesses across diverse industry sectors and proudly carries an industry-leading brand reputation. The Account Management Team average a 95% retention rate with their clients. This means that the vast majority of SES clients are choosing to stick with SES year after year, contract after contract.

SES team members have also stuck around, thanks to the positive work environment that has been nurtured over SES’s 15 years in business. Over 60% of the team have been with SES for over 5 years, and the team continues to grow with interdisciplinary respect and cohesion. From Tendering to Marketing, Energy Efficiency to Account Management, each team now has more visibility and transparency of each other, improving the efficiency of various processes that span the business.

SES is keen to continue improving its service excellence through various channels. Having undergone this initiative to deliver ‘Excellence’ and to ‘up their game’, SES was able to identify several other areas for improvement, including rolling out more automation workflows, new EDM and social media campaign formats including video updates, a company intranet to further consolidate and streamline workflows across teams, and bigger targets to hit in coming years.

For information about Sustainable Energy Solutions, visit sustainableenergysolutions.com.au