Professional services
Professional services procurement is rarely about getting the lowest price. Most users - who are typically senior business leaders - would consider paying more for better performance. Crucially, therefore, procurement cannot decide which supplier is offering the best value, and fails when it tries to do so.
However the opportunity for procurement to influence these senior business leaders has never been greater. Procurement can add tremendous value by enabling professional services users to intelligently make the price/performance trade-off, by simplifying and strengthening the procurement process and by ensuring that total costs remain as low as possible for the performance required.
In addition to our consultancy services, our CIPS Award-winning software (Pro4C) uses the latest technology to consistently optimise value in our clients' professional services procurement.
Professional services sub-categories include:
- Audit and Accountancy Services
- Consultancy Services
- Financial Services
- Expatriate Taxation
- Insurance
- Pensions
- Legal Services
Some of the challenges we typically find in this area include:
- Balancing service fulfillment, risk mitigation, lead times and cost avoidance with pricing
- Refining the service specifications and translating them into outcomes-based pricing
- Defining the correct resource mix
- Using the correct level of expertise for the required service components
- Improving the processes and policies that impact costs
- Ensuring ongoing measurement and feedback of provider