First anniversary under YorPower banner celebrates huge step forward

How unifying the YorPower Group has transformed how it works

A lot has happened over the last year for the company now known solely as YorPower. At the end of January 2023, Stephen Peal who had recently moved into the role of YorPower Group Managing Director, formally announced that YorPower, PPSPower and Glenace had completed their merger and now operate under the YorPower name.

The component parts of the Group had been operating successfully for many years independently. PPSPower had been a strong brand in its own right: a trusted provider of back-up power maintenance solutions for a diverse set of customers across the UK. Glenace had been the controls and automation arm of the group. Underpinning all of this, YorPower existed as the trusted manufacturer and exporter of generators.

‘Trusted’ is a word that has always been integral to the YorPower group. In the back-up power industry, companies depend on continuous power – any power failure, even momentary, can be disastrous. That’s why having a reliable and trusted provider of back-up power solutions is so important and YorPower is proud to be that trusted name for a growing number of customers.

“It has been a lot of hard work to knit the constituent business of the group together, achieving one unified way of working. But it was also a huge opportunity that is now yielding great results right across the business,” explains Stephen Peal. Below, he briefly describes YorPower’s incredible journey over the past year.

The Different Departments of the Group

Manufacturing and Dispatch

“The team in this part of the group grew during 2023 and YorPower is now looking at embracing better planning systems to increase efficiencies. The nature of this work is to see alternating highs and lows in demand. Having stronger, more proactive planning and management in place is designed to mitigate and forecast these peaks and troughs. Enhancing our working environment will enable us to adapt more easily to demand.”

Export, Product Sales and Delivery

“As the new Group Managing Director, I made an effort to visit some of the company’s dealers in Kenya and Bangladesh. I also developed a process of reassessing and communicating via video calls to our resellers and dealers.

“We have implemented a stronger process that challenges our partners but also opens up better opportunities for YorPower UK to offer better support that can help drive each regions success,” he explains.

“We have invested in systems that give us better market intelligence and are continuing to develop and streamline processes to make us more efficient and improve reporting. We have recruited more experience to this team to help facilitate and guide our new approach. This has already delivered growth beyond our initial expectations.”

UK Product and Sales Delivery

“This team has worked hard at adopting new systems that were once only used by our service team (the old PPSPower business). This has enabled the team to hand over their sales to operations with the click of a button and has ensured that operations can deliver to the customers’ expectations with ease. Developing clearer accountabilities and clarifying the role of internal support for our field teams has already delivered better efficiencies and will continue to do so as we develop our internal sales structure.”

Spare Parts Sales

“This team has been redeveloped into a dedicated sales support team with dispatching left to our warehouse team. Previously, this team would see projects through to completion, which had its pros and cons. Dedicating a team to sales support has allowed us to respond much quicker and more consistently to the growing demand and allowed the warehouse team to maintain better controls.”

Parts and Warehouse

“When the businesses were fragmented, each company had its own stock allocation. Unifying these businesses has enables us to merge the teams, stock levels and better define the processes to ensure we get things right first time and improve all round efficiencies. We also have better visibility on stock levels and are continuing to develop the levels we should be keeping readily available at our head office to actively support all business streams.”

Service Sales and Engineer Coordination

“The biggest win here has been stronger visibility on shared engineering resource. This has, and will continue to, allow the wider business to benefit from the expertise that was once fragmented. Field Service Engineers are now being used more in commissioning opportunities. Control Panel engineers are being brought in to manufacturing and dispatch.

“We have even been developing generator engineers in UPS roles, especially those with strong electrical knowledge. This has not only given us opportunities to be more efficient, but is also exposing our engineers to better development opportunities and improving their awareness of the wider business.

“The internal service sales team is now being developed to become an internal sales team that can support all of our business offerings. We hope that this will again enhance efficiencies, but also give us the opportunity to promote our full turnkey opportunities to all of our valued customers.”

Finance

“Our finance department was always set up to support all businesses but is now feeling the benefit of everything being one company. This team arguably felt the most pain as we merged the businesses and the many challenges this presented.”

Culture, Engagement and Business Ethics

Many companies set out with values for their employees to embrace, and a vision of how to achieve their ambitions. “It was very important to ensure that everyone understood and was on board with our group brand and the values and vision statement that sit within that,” explains Stephen.

“This is now playing a big part in how we do business and we have driven this through employee engagement and stronger communication strategies:

• Employee Engagement. YorPower worked with Pro-Development to deliver a strategy from which we could get honest and open feedback from all employees on how we are doing, what we are like to work for. I have been clear that my personal ambition is for YorPower to be the best place any of our employees have ever worked and this was a huge part of that target. Our initial findings (simplified) were that we needed to find improvements in the following areas:
  • Training & Development
  • Better and more regular one-to-ones
  • Recognition and reward

When people are engaged, they care about getting the job done, and they care about the customer.

• Summer Awards Party. In July 2023 we held our first awards party off-site but near head office. This allowed us an opportunity to bring the teams together in a relaxed social environment and recognise their efforts of the last year. It also enabled us to communicate the strategies of each department to all, discuss our vison statement and values again but more importantly recognise those in the business that have excelled during this early period of change.
• Carbon Neutral. “YorPower is certified as Silver and we are currently working on Gold with our partners – Neutral Carbon Zone.

“We are also now Gold-accredited in the Supply Chain Sustainability School. Launched in 2012, it is a free virtual leaning platform around sustainability, to upskill those working within the built environment sector.

“YorPower (under our former name PPSPower) has been a member of the school since 2014. This has enabled us to assess ourselves and access training resource to improve the following three areas:

• Management
• Sustainability

• People

We have accessed over 75 hours of training over those years. We are now ranked above average in all areas but with plenty of room for improvement.

• Social Value. YorPower is certified as a forces-owned business and is a signatory of the Armed Forces Covenant. Our dedication to the 5% Club remains and we maintain at least 5% of our employees as apprentice. We are involved in many local initiatives and charitable events and continue to proudly sponsor a youth football team.”