Improving residents’ lives with a modernised council procurement function

Through a series of projects and complex sourcing deals, we’ve enabled the delivery of more than £30m in savings.

The council wanted to improve the lives of its residents with better services, but it was facing budget constraints and needed to find efficiencies. We were engaged through a competitive process and, at the outset, integrated our team of procurement experts to strengthen the council’s procurement function.

In partnership with the council, we’ve developed and implemented:

• A new operating model for procurement
• Innovative technology to improve service for residents and reduce cost for the council
• Insightful, data-driven reporting
• Governance processes and documentation that are tailored for the council
• A digitised sourcing platform to improve the sourcing experience for both buyers and suppliers.

We work closely with stakeholders to build consideration of social value into their procurement processes. For example, we’ve engaged local suppliers for maintenance and building services across the council’s sites. The project’s primary objective is to support local small businesses and create social value in the area, while ensuring that council property is properly maintained.

As part of this project, our facilities and supply chain management experts conducted extensive market analysis, benchmarking and supplier consultation. They ran several engagement events to identify and encourage suitably qualified local suppliers, provide guidance on the tendering process, and set expectations for the quality of responses.

In addition to the benefits for local businesses, the new contract has delivered more than 10% in savings and has reduced supply chain risk for the council by diversifying its suppliers.

In another project, we sourced a specialist organisation on behalf of the council to train, advise and support new entrepreneurs. The resulting training programme enables people to test ideas and launch businesses without getting into debt. By following compliant procurement procedures, the council made savings which it invested in promoting the programme to entrepreneurs.

Through working in partnership with the council, we’ve helped it to improve the services that it delivers to residents, while significantly reducing costs and driving efficiencies. We’ve also increased contract coverage and improved contract management by deploying a contract management toolkit.

The project has created a high level of social value by delivering apprenticeship schemes, using local suppliers, supporting local community events and training long-term unemployed residents.