Procurement

Procurement

Procurement as an industry has matured and we support business management cycles with effective Diagnostics including Fundamentals reviews. We deliver rapid cost reduction, improved service levels and risk mitigation across our client’s total spend or within individual categories. We have proven ourselves across a vast range of categories e.g. deep sea equipment, car park tickets, fitness equipment, psychiatric furniture, social care, cloud computing to name but a few. We take the savings a step further by embedding the fundamentals of great procurement inside our client so that savings are continually improved upon.

In order to meet those changing needs our services include the following:

1) Procurement Diagnostic

We examine all client expenditure in detail and review Fundamentals (see 3) below) as part of the Diagnostic. We cover operating and capital expenditure as well as any collaborative opportunities. Using our analytical tools, interviews with key stakeholders, expertise and experience we identify the key savings opportunities, their value and how to improve the Fundamentals to embed these savings for the future.  Value includes indirect benefits as well as direct savings.

Our recommendations are laid out in a Diagnostic Report which details all opportunities and the analysis behind them as well as identifying:

• Those which should be implemented immediately and those which for whatever reason are for the the medium or long term
• Those which our client will be able to deliver itself and those that will require support.

Initiatives are modeled in our Cash flow Assessment Tool aka “Ernie” which shows a detailed activity plan and the cash flow impact on the business, by week over the life of the implementation programme.

2) Benefits Delivery

We are extremely pragmatic and are happy to be held responsible for delivering any of the opportunities we identify. We are skilled in benefits delivery, more often than not delivering in excess of our estimations. We are skilled in project management and clients are able to track our performance, in real-time against our Diagnostic projections, on-line via Ernie.

3) Procurement Fundamentals
Effective Fundamentals form the basis for retaining the savings we deliver and ensuring continuous improvement. They include:

• Policy & Strategy
• People & Structure
• Process & Systems
• Supplier Measurement & Management
• Benefits Tracking

We compare existing fundamentals to best practice for the client (based on size and sector) and advise on the steps required and the benefits this will bring. We will also manage implementation

4) Sustainable Procurement
We analyse the full supply chain to ensure that our clients are sourcing in an optimal way from an environmentally sustainable perspective not breaching any commitments they have made or are held to by statute, either directly or indirectly via suppliers. Given that our focus is also on cost savings we will optimise the two criteria for our clients.

5) Collaborative Procurement
The opportunities from collaboration lie in common specifications and leveraging volumes. The obstacles lie in the cultural changes which are often reqired to collaborate. Collaboration applies within an individual entity e.g. co-ordinated /consolidated group purchasing versus fragmented local purchasing. It also applies across entities e.g. private equity portfolios, groups of Local Authorities. We identify the opportunity and deal with all the change management issues required to make it happen. We will identify the organisational model which will work.