Helpful tips to make your strategic supplier relationships work really well

Earlier this year, the National Audit Office (NAO) and the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) produced critical reports on the state of the UK’s nuclear deterrent programme. A £1.35bn increase in costs over three projects was put down to a number…

This month the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) released a critical report on two decades of NHS failure to get its IT projects right. This is summed up at the opener of the report “The Department [Department of Health and Social…

When Strategic Suppliers represent themselves as a specialist in the services you would like them to manage, the law implies certain obligations and responsibilities upon those suppliers, (their Expert Responsibilities) even if those responsibilities aren’t documented in any written contract terms or schedules…

In the pursuit of successful strategic supplier relationships, the old adage ‘prevention is the best cure’ comes to mind frequently, so the question of how to minimise and mitigate procurement risk is a common one. The fact is that most…

The most successful service delivery relationships have business case development at their core, ensuring that they clearly articulate the specifics of what will change in the organisation once the business objectives or outcomes have been achieved. A sound business case will identify what operational, financial…

Ambiguity in service/solution requirements specification is the single biggest cause of disputes in complex strategic supplier relationships. Our ‘Optimise’ service/solution requirements process assures clarity in aligning your specific requirements to your business outcomes. They will be free of ambiguity and can be contractually…

Behaviours that build commercial trust aren’t complicated, but they are challenging to implement consistently, every day. This is because a whole host of interruptions and competing priorities encroach on your time. Working with your Strategic Supplier to prioritise your business outcomes is an important first…

Commercial trust in strategic supplier relationships concerns the ‘on-the-ground’ behaviours of both parties. It exists when someone does what they say they are going to do when they say they are going to do it.  Commercial trust is mainly about the individuals in…

Is there an inherent potential for a conflict of interest when the same firm of accountants that audits a company’s accounts also does a considerable amount of consultancy work for them? Their professional standards body states these organisations have a…

Suppliers come in all stripes. Some operate as genuine partners – identifying ever-more effective operating practices often, without being asked. In these types of strategic relationships, everyone wins: the clients/service users win because they benefit from ongoing reductions in business-as-usual…

The urge to exit a failed strategic supplier or outsourcing relationship can be so strong that clients leap to instruct their lawyers before they have fully assessed the operational (as opposed to contractual) risks of getting out of a failed contract, early. In short, they do not…

As strategic and trusted supplier partners, the ‘big four’ – PwC, Deloitte, KPMG and EY – take on a significant percentage of the audit work the market has to offer. Reportedly around 97% of all FTSE 350 companies have audit…

Strategic partnership relationships are inherently complex entities. At their outset, you will inevitably know less about one another than six to twelve months later. However, at the outset you are expected to develop a roadmap in the form of a…

A strategic partnership is only as strong as the commercial trust you share. When things go wrong it is important you consider contract termination as the ‘nuclear option’; the option of last resort when every other reasonable mechanism to improve…

Deciding to terminate a strategic supplier contract before the end of its contract term, is a major undertaking. It poses a real risk of disrupting your organisation’s operations. It is also a significant drain on your time and potentially very…

When considering what you need for your early contract termination evidence and to make the process as smooth as possible, you will need robust evidence that your strategic supplier has failed to achieve the business outcomes you expected. In preparing…

What’s the cost of poor contract design and management? When it comes to our nuclear deterrent here in the UK, the answer is reportedly £1.35 billion. That is the figure the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has placed on the cost…

There are key differences in the core functions of private and public sector organisations. When you bring them together in a complex strategic supplier relationship, you will have some who will be fundamentally opposed to the partnership from an ideological…

Government support for British business has come in many forms throughout the Covid-19 crisis – always welcome and often significantly beneficial. Network Rail is one public owned entity that is doing its bit to help. It is representative of the…

Competitive Dialogue (CD) is a public sector procurement tendering procedure whereby you enter into dialogue with suppliers until you find a solution that meets the needs of your organisation. It is ideal for complex and high-risk solutions where there are…

The government has introduced a number of schemes during the Covid-19 pandemic to minimise risks that might otherwise have resulted in the economy grinding to a halt. Ongoing reports on the economic outlook of the country may look pretty bleak…

Having been involved in optimising more than 500 complex strategic supplier relationships, we have been fortunate to have worked with organisations, both private- and public-sector, to develop some really great innovation-led practices. As part of this work over the last…

A couple of months ago, news broke of challenges in a number of Leicester-based clothing factories. Reports suggested that workers were being paid below the minimum wage, with allegations of exploitation and human trafficking and of a workforce forced to…

It’s encouraging to focus an article on a success story. The one that caught our attention is the strategic supplier relationship between the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) and social justice charity Nacro, whose role is to assist in the reform…

A consortium led by the UK government and Indian conglomerate Bharti Global has won the right to buy ailing satellite business OneWeb (subject to approval from the company’s creditors, the U.S. Bankruptcy Court and regulatory approval) for USD$1bn. The UK’s…

In June, NHS supplier Redcentric reportedly suffered a dual blow of financial and reputational loss. The reputational issues were related to the announcement that three former employees were to be prosecuted for ‘fraud, false accounting and misleading an auditor after…

According to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), “the global economy is now experiencing the deepest recession since the Great Depression in the 1930s, with GDP declines of more than 20% and a surge in unemployment in many…

For the last four months, the news media has been practically a one-focus outlet. As the health impacts of the pandemic start to wind down, news of the economic consequences it is leaving in its wake have started to filter…

The question of ‘institutional racism’ is particularly poignant at this time, and while the claims UVW has made against St George’s University of London on behalf of their members will be seen by some to be extreme, there are likely…

The effects of Covid-19 on the NHS and its staff are likely to be felt long into the future. The current crisis has seen an unprecedented demand for acute care, particularly intensive care units, which has led to significant efforts…

Two of the UK’s largest public sector outsourcing businesses have agreed to combine their support services divisions as Mitie Group purchases Interserve’s facilities management arm. Both organisations are heavily involved in public sector work, with Mitie currently managing a number…

The coronavirus pandemic has created a uniquely challenging environment for organisations, both public and private, to contend with. Forecasts of potential visions of what is to come, will inevitably contain a level of calculated guesses and considered estimations. However, one…

A dispute that erupted in the first half of last year is once again in the news media. Stagecoach, one of a number of public transport providers in the UK and US, took the Department for Transport (DfT) to court…

The concept of clients collaborating with one another on the procurement of service provision, and on its delivery, is nothing new. Shared services have been utilised in both the public and private sectors for many years because of the sometimes…

The coronavirus pandemic has created issues and opportunities. It has brought to the fore the systems and processes already in existence for dealing with just such an event. Over the last few weeks we have written a number of articles…

Covid-19 has helped focus the minds of leadership teams in terms of the degree of value and benefits a number of organisations are achieving from their strategic supplier relationships. Over the last two to three months, the reliance on key…

As we enter the tenth week of ‘Lockdown’ here in the UK, we have seen the government going to significant lengths to protect businesses and jobs. It has invested funds and resources at unprecedented levels on schemes, loans, packages and…

The coronavirus crisis has impacted clients and strategic suppliers across the globe with supply chains suffering, in often unpredictable ways, from the domino effect of challenges from any one or more organisations rippling out to affect others. In response this…

Confidence is a vital element in any major IT project relationship, confidence in your supplier’s ability to deliver on your expectations – as the length, cost and disruption involved in any such project can be significant, alongside the risks associated…

We’ve been contacted by many clients concerned about the financial stability of their key strategic suppliers. With the ongoing COVID-19 crisis impacting businesses on a truly global scale, it is an unfortunate fact that some may not survive the commercial…