Price comparison site goes live
Jan 20, 2010
Annual report budget comparison website gets good reception
Moheko, the new website that enables UK companies to compare annual report costs, has been launched.
It is hoped the website, which launched on January 18, will simplify the existing pitching process by assembling a pitch list of agencies, all within a defined budget range. Lyndsay Wright, head of IR at FTSE 250 company William Hill, thinks the website is a ‘no brainer’ for corporates.
‘We often don’t know whether what we’re paying is fair and reasonable for any of our IR services, whether that be brokers, financial PR or annual reports,’ she tells IR magazine. ‘The pitch process is too time-consuming to carry out on a regular basis.’
Wright doesn’t think the website will always lead to lower quotes but believes it can help firms ascertain whether they are being charged a fair price for their requirements.
‘When I first joined William Hill, I felt the amount we were paying Brunswick for financial PR was relatively high,’ she explains. ‘After going through the pitch process, however, I realized it was a fair price. Last year I saw 15 agencies in that pitch process. If I’d known the approximate quotes, I could have immediately eliminated those that were too high and those that were too low in price, which would have saved me a lot of time.’
Robert Moser, the man behind the initiative, says it is getting off to a good start. ‘We’re currently expecting more than a dozen of the largest agencies to respond to each opportunity, which I think will be really valuable for the vast majority of public companies,’ he notes.
Helen Rankin-Moriarty, director of Brighton-based fledgling communications agency Lyons Rankin, has pledged her support for Moheko on Twitter and LinkedIn.
‘Virtually every agency does print mark-up,’ she observes. ‘For example, most agencies mark up all work done by a third party and this should be made clearer to public companies. Part of our clear and transparent pricing policy includes quoting all supplier fees at cost to the client and applying a fixed 10 percent mark-up. Some agencies have been known to mark up print prices by up to 300 percent.’
Moser says two FTSE 250 companies have already asked Moheko to get quotes for their impending reporting projects.
Earlier stories: 2010: the year of the cheap annual report?