With inflation, many businesses owners are looking at ways to save money.

Instead of spending countless hours going through bills and budgets, a national company with a local presence named Schooley Mitchell takes the reigns. 

"We look at their essential services," said Adam Baker. "Things like their utilities, their staffing, their credit card processing, their telephones, waste."

Baker is a strategic partner with Schooley Mitchell, the nation's largest independent cost reduction consulting firm.

"We work with for-profits, non-profits, municipalities, school districts," said . "As long as they have commercial accounts, we can work with them"

One of the local accounts is A. Duchini, a longtime, family-owned business in east Erie.

Operations manager Christina Mulvin helps run the business with her parents and brother.

"We manufacture concrete block, manufacture split face orders," said Mulvin. "We sell retaining wall pavers, mortars, stone, brick fireplaces, and we have an Ace Hardware as well."

Now in its 90th year in business, A. Duchini has always had members of its business negotiate their own contracts, but when Schooley Mitchell came calling, they decided to take a risk.

"They helped us with our waste, our telecommunications, our cell phones, our internet and our in house phone lines," said Mulvin.

With just waste alone, Baker and Mulvin negotiated at 60 percent savings, and a 25 percent savings on their telecom bill for when current contract expires.

"They know we're gonna watch it, so we know at what point in the contracts we can go back and renegotiate, so they don't have to do that," said Baker.

While Baker is the local contact, there is a team of analysts in Canada where Schooley Mitchell originated which monitors cost-saving areas to get customers the best prices.

"For me, it took such a big relief off my shoulders," said Mulvin. "Now I can say when someone calls, we have someone handling that for us. I refer them to Schooley Mitchell."