Public Bodies are under intense financial pressure, and services will suffer. Right? I would argue “up to a point”. There are in fact some significant hidden revenue streams that public bodies could be exploiting.
We are all familiar with ways that financial pressure can be mitigated – from new ways of doing things (in particular digitalisation of services and better commercial models) to finding ways to raise new revenue streams and better targeting of services.
But many are missing their most valuable potential revenue streams – because they are either not in plain sight, or are not seen for what they potentially are. Why do we not see them? Because we all have a job to do, and we are focused on that with ever more constrained circumstances and significant change happening all around us. It’s not just bewildering, spending time on it means that the day job may suffer.
Without the commercial market perspective of people who work in seemingly unrelated fields, and understanding of market trends, and just having seen great examples from other places nationally and internationally – these opportunities would easily be missed.
Take the humble streetlight. Many would just see a street light, others a column with a luminaire on top. We see a valuable piece of real estate with power supplied. A mobile network operator might see the same thing and wonder how to get it at the best price possible to maximise margin, they might offer you public WiFi free of charge to gain access (and lock out their competitors).
But beware – there is no such thing as a free lunch. The value to these commercial operators is much greater than what they are offering. So you can get more than free WiFi and indeed there are ways of packaging up to get even greater revenues in return – as well as free WiFi! We call it Neutral Host – you can find out more here.
But that’s not the end of it – Neutral Host is also potentially the basis of our public service transformation around ‘Smart Society’ – in particular Smart City.
What I have given here is just one (or two!) opportunities – there are many more across energy, the high street, public buildings, and public space monitoring to name just a few. The integration and sharing across multiple public service providers (not just the public sector) also has potential revenue streams for public bodies as we have seen in a number of our client projects.
By combining public service leaders across central and local government and private sector leaders across multiple industries, we have created the cauldron where new opportunities for commercial value from public assets are being identified. And we have the Go To Market specialists able to make that happen, as well as links to investors who might contribute if necessary.
So, if you are looking for those hidden (large) revenue streams, and want some ideas, or have found them but don’t know how best to go to market, drop us a line and arrange a chat.
In the first instance, please contact Barney Smith or Richard Barrington for a conversation.