Procurement Outcomes Improvements

Supporting a local Council on a procurement review and delivery of rapid improvement actions.

To discuss how we can help you with similar challenges please contact Mark Ellis

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The Problem

The client was seeking large-scale improvement in its ability to obtain value for money from its third party spend, ensuring it achieves the best possible outcomes for the communities it served.
However, the client lacked sufficient internal capability and capacity to define and deliver the changes needed to secure the improvements in its procurement and commercial outcomes.
To assist in this, 4C was appointed as the Council’s delivery partner for its Procurement Improvement Programme (PIP).
The first phase of the project was to undertake an end-to-end review of the Council’s procurement activities, from the formulation of options (e.g. make or buy) and the assessment of procurement strategies, to the execution of procurement activity and the management of the resulting contracts and supplier relationships.

Over an eight-week period, applying the 4C “ABC” diagnostic approach and our Procurement Capability Maturity Framework, we were able to complete a rigorous assessment of the Council’s overall approach to procurement and develop a prioritised suite of improvement actions along with an accompanying road map for their delivery.
We interviewed internal and external stakeholders, including the procurement team, employees in operational service areas, elected members and representatives from suppliers and the third sector.
Concurrently we reviewed policies and procedures, the governance process, tendering and evaluation documents and contract management arrangements.
We also analysed a range of additional qualitative and quantitative data, including £550m per year of third party spend.

A clear picture of the “as-is” situation and a detailed understanding of the underlying issues that are impacting performance are now available to the Council, with the long term objective to improve residents lives.
The Council gained in-depth understanding of what needs to be done to address these issues and deliver sustainable improvements in its approach to procurement and the outcomes it achieved from its third party spend.
Prioritisation of the improvement actions with an improvement roadmap was put in place, also supported by our team.