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9 February 2012 | Angeline Albert

William Hill has reduced its cleaning bill by £8 million and nearly halved waste sent to landfill, through changes to the company’s buying culture.

The bookmaker outsourced the cleaning of its betting shops to a single supplier Interserve last year as part of a three-year contract worth £8.5 million annually. The agreement is expected to reduce the company’s cleaning costs by £8 million between 2011 and 2014, thanks to the contract management work carried out by the procurement team and its contract manager Monica Dingwall.

Dingwall joined William Hill with the aim of adding value as well as cost savings to the company’s existing contracts, and has achieved it by educating the wider business about procurement. Hired in September 2010, she began educating the internal business, which included explaining performance measures such as SLAs to staff working at William Hill’s 2,300 betting shops.

“Some operational and procurement language was a barrier but it was important to explain terms and ensure that suppliers’ performance is measured in a way that would meet business needs,” she told SM.

A year on, the cleaning contract which began in February 2011 is meeting business needs and in addition to cost savings there has been several other benefits to the agreement. Previously, different contractors had responsibility for cleaning small numbers of shops. Not only has management of the contract brought greater consistency and use of the same, approved cleaning products in all shops but it also caused a 40 per cent rise in recycling. Prior to the contract, 1 per cent of William Hill’s waste was recycled a year, but this figure has since risen to 41 per cent and the amount of company waste going to landfill has fallen from 99 per cent to 59 per cent.

William Hill has an annual procurement spend of £350 million. Cleaning practices have also been made more efficient, cutting the number of hours spent, and reducing overall costs.

Dingwall added: “Some of the staff at William Hill have been here for 40 years. There are also some very established supplier relationships. It was definitely a challenge to influence the business. Our aim is working on getting the business to come to procurement by choice.”