Category Archives: Public Sector

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Renegotiating PFI Contracts: 3 Steps to Cutting Costs in a Successful Partnership

Posted on by Allan Watton Roadworks

The adverse financial ramifications of large PFI contracts that were negotiated in healthier economic times are only now becoming clear to many public sector organisations across the UK. Such agreements were entered into with the best of intentions and were usually fit for purpose at the time, but the dramatic shift in finances available to the public sector has changed the financial viability of such partnerships drastically. If you have

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The Failure of Southwest One: What Can We Learn?

Posted on by Allan Watton SouthWest One Logo.

In 2007, Somerset County Council struck a deal to outsource various services to a joint venture company. That company — Southwest One (SW1) — was intended to serve as a trailblazer that demonstrated how public and private organisations could work together to benefit the communities of the South West and further afield. However, at the end of March the death knell of the relationship was marked by news that Somerset

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Posted in Contract Management, IT Contract, IT Dispute, Managed Services, Outsourcing, Performance Improvement, Project Recovery, Public Sector, Risk Management | Tagged , | Comments Off

How to Create an Evaluation Framework for Procurement Tenders

Posted on by Chris Browne Framework.

In a recent post we outlined our four step minimum risk procurement strategy in which we discussed the creation of an evaluation framework. This is something that I cannot stress the importance of enough — not only is a good evaluation framework the only way to accurately measure the relative merits (or otherwise) of submitted tenders, it is a necessity for public sector organisations with regards to transparency and the

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How to Address the Dangers of Pensions in Strategic Commissioning Procurement

Posted on by Allan Watton A "No Entry" sign.

Professional Pensions recently reported that the procurement of library services by Croydon Council has been severely hamstrung by issues relating to Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS) contributions. Although John Laing Integrated Services (JLIS) was selected as the preferred bidder in November 2012, the procurement process has recently taken a major step back due to an “unexpected” change in their bid. There is a strong moral to this story that should

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ERP Procurement: Discovering the Method That’s Best For You

Posted on by Richard Kerr A "One Size Fits All" label.

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) procurement is an area that I find fascinating. Undertaking to purchase one system that spans the entirety of an organisation’s processes is both ambitious and risky — it promises enormous reward but is ready to trip you up if you don’t handle the process properly. In purchasing and implementing ERP software you are essentially stripping down your organisation’s infrastructure and building it up again from the ground

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G-Cloud Procurement: The Importance of “Caveat Emptor”

Posted on by Peter Carter The CloudStore logo.

The government’s G-Cloud programme recently celebrated its first birthday and its success (or failure) still seems to be in the balance. On the one hand you have the G-Cloud programme director Denise McDonagh stating that “most big government departments have bought services from the Cloud” and citing “significant buy-in from local government.” Meanwhile, the numbers tell perhaps a different story with just 0.04 percent of all government IT spending taking place

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A 4 Step Minimum Risk Procurement Strategy

Posted on by Chris Browne Revenues & Benefits

When it comes to the world of procurement, the old phrase “prevention is the best cure” comes to mind frequently. The fact is that most faulty or failing supplier relationships are the result of a poorly executed pre-contract process. With the best will in the world, a poorly-constructed contract is going to lead to miscommunication between both the client and the vendor which is likely to result in dissatisfaction down the line.

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How to Reduce the Risk of Your Strategic Partner Using Sub-Contractors

Posted on by Allan Watton A chess piece.

Last week we featured 2e2′s administration in an article about disaster avoidance. However, the 2e2 story offers up more than one moral that we can apply to the practice of outsourcing. Yes — 2e2 failed as a prime contractor, which acts as a reminder of the importance of carrying out effective due diligence in any outsourcing contract. But in another circumstance, it also failed as a sub-contractor, which in turn

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Why Eric Pickles’ “50 Ways to Save” Fails Local Authorities

Posted on by Allan Watton Piggy Bank

On Friday 21st December 2012 — the last working day before the Christmas break — the details of core grant allocations to councils across the UK were announced. The data revealed that cuts to local authority budgets could be as high as 15% in 2013, rising cumulatively to nearly 40% in 2014-15. It is against this backdrop that Eric Pickles issued a document under the auspices of the Department for

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Multi-Sourcing: 7 Steps to Reduced Costs and Improved Services

Posted on by Allan Watton Multi-Sourcing

Multi-sourcing offers a huge opportunity to both the public and private sectors in terms of achieving (and even surpassing) desired outcomes. The reasoning behind this is rather simple — it is, in principle, a far more streamlined and efficient version of outsourcing. Whilst “traditional” outsourcing hands the entire service to a main contractor, multi-sourcing utilises multiple “best of breed” providers, each with specific skill sets, all managed by the client. However, the

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