For Fred Chu, no business is so efficient that it cannot find some way to reduce its costs.

He is passionate about helping companies reduce their expenses. Food chains, banks, oil companies, accountants, even aerospace companies around the world, have all used the services of Expense Reduction Analysts (ERA) to save anywhere from HK$30,000 to over HK$10 million annually.

Mr Chu, who is a banker by profession, bought in 2002 the Hong Kong licence rights for ERA in Hong Kong -- a U.K. cost management and procurement consultancy founded in 1992.

"If we don't deliver any savings, we don't charge a penny," he says. "And the savings we are talking about are not corner-cutting costs, because quality is never reduced, just expenses."

For every dollar that ERA helps companies save, Mr Chu takes 50 cents as payment. "So in actual fact, our services cost a company nothing. Simply by improving the value of products and services purchased, we are able to create average savings of 10 to 40 percent for our clients," he says.

With operations in over 20 countries world-wide, ERA's client portfolio reads like a who's who of the world's leading blue-chip companies. In Hong Kong, ERA's main clients are hotels, insurance, law and accounting firms, manufacturers and schools.

"We've managed to deliver annual savings for these firms ranging from HK$30,000 to HK$3 million," he says. "Obviously, the bigger the company the more they are able to save, but in general most of our clients are medium-sized enterprises."

The main form of cost savings result from ERA's analysis of a company's spending behaviour. Because a CFO cannot always know what the best options are in every part of a company's operations, he may not realise what savings could be made on travel expenses for example, or on ocean freight charges, or even on something seemingly as trivial as phone lines.

"A lot of firms have been downsizing in the past few years, but many of them are still paying for the same number of telephone lines. This may seem minor, but when added all together over the course of a year the savings that can be made surprise a lot of people," Mr Chu explains.

ERA's service involves three main phases: analysis, benchmarking and implementation, with the whole process normally taking between six to eight weeks to complete.

Once a firm's procurement expenses have been analysed, ERA will present a situation report, detailing the firm's spending profile. These data are then benchmarked against ERA's global database and market best practices, after which ERA will present an option report, advising how a company can reduce unnecessary costs. Once im-plemented, ERA follows up to make sure nothing has slipped through the cracks.

Mr Chu says that unlike some consultants, who write a report for businesses, collect their fee and then leave the company to act on the advice in the report, ERA actually works with firms to generate analysis reports as well as the implementation.

Some businesses obviously have some concerns about opening the books to a consultant firm, but Mr Chu says ERA must sign a confidentiality agreement and adhere to a strict code of conduct when working with clients.

Even so, Hong Kong firms traditionally like to keep their financial dealings close to their chest. As a result, education is proving to be a big challenge in driving the business forward, says Mr Chu. For foreign companies, many of which have heard of ERA, or their business back home have actually used ERA before, they are much more willing to see how they can reduce costs using ERA here.

"From the client's perspective, this is good value because we provide them with up to two month's of consultancy work at no extra cost. It may sound odd, but this is how we compete in the market -- if we don't generate savings for clients, we don't take any fee," he says.