Helpful tips to make your strategic supplier relationships work really well

High failure rates are common in most complex projects/service delivery relationships. Some research puts failure rates as high as 87% and as ‘low’ as 56%. With great spend, comes great responsibility. With so many interconnected activities to monitor and support,…

When looking to transition from one complex project or outsourcing agreement (including the supplier) to another, one of the key issues we find is that all too often organisations try to ‘fill in the gaps’ from what was being delivered…

What is a ‘fit for purpose contract’? And how can it really drive collaborative behaviour? When it comes to complex projects and service delivery relationships, the aim of a fit for purpose contract is for it to provide the operating foundations to drive…

Before signing up to new contracts – especially large ones – a round of pre-contractual due diligence is something that should never be skimped on, skirted around or ignored. Due diligence is the safety net that assures your supplier ‘asks you the…

Joint working is often a product of financial necessity. However, it should also be viewed through a benefits lens – organisations coming together to generate and invest in much more innovative practices. Strategic alliances can be formed between multiple clients…

There are many reasons why you might consider Insourcing services or a function that has previously been delivered by an external third-party provider. We look at the typical challenges organisations face when undertaking the decision to insource and the foundations…

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…

What started on a small scale in the 1980s and was championed by the Labour Party in the early 2000s), has become the £280bn+ business of outsourcing in the UK. While large single supplier outsourcing relationships were all the rage…

The creation of an evaluation framework for public sector procurements 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…

Why read this article? Key takeaways: There are 13 key subject areas of great practical importance which the government’s ‘Sourcing Playbook’ recommends in order to help drive maximum value in these complex projects and relationships. The first half of this…

In this article, you should find everything you need to know about procurement services (including strategic procurement), procurement and contracting strategies, and procurement consultants and advisors. It will also offer guidance on whether external advice for procurement might be helpful…

In this ‘Back to Basics’ article, we’ll answer the question ‘What is a strategic partnership?’ by being clear about what distinguishes strategic partnerships from other types of supplier relationships. We’ll look at some common features of strategic partnerships, the potential…

If an individual or small group of employees wants better pay, healthcare or changes to other terms of employment, they may highlight this to you, their employer. But how seriously will you take their request (barring the nature of the…

While change can be worrying, often it’s the anxiety surrounding a prospective change in the status of your strategic suppliers/partners which can cause more uncertainty. Therefore, rapid, inciteful and accurate information to determine the validity and severity of an issue…

While there has been a tendency towards agile principles and approaches within procurement in recent years – often to compensate for unknown ‘unknowns’ at the outset of a project – in complex strategic projects it is usually far more cost…

The relationship you create, nurture and commit to with your strategic supplier partner(s) has the potential to drive the right behaviours to generate sustained dedication to innovation. In turn, this often helps you achieve your ultimate business outcomes more quickly…

You may be looking for a way to achieve better value and success from your digital transformation projects. A good source of inspiration would be a recent NAO report on the topic – The challenges in implementing digital change. It…

A collaborative partnership in complex projects can only exist where a fair and balanced spread of interests and value is achieved between the parties. In other words, good partnerships exist in an environment where mutual interests are not only sought…

Many of our blogs refer to the importance of not only entering larger contracts in the right way but also the equal, if not greater, importance of managing these contracts and the providers they are with, once they are in…

Digitising health records has been a government goal since the days of the failed NHS National Programme for IT (NPfiT) – launched in 2002 with a budget of £6.2 billion its goal was, among other top-down changes, to introduce a…

Increased accuracy in predicting the costs involved within any complex/strategic project offers significant advantages – whether in negotiations within the procurement process, in developing more collaborative working relationships with your suppliers or in optimising efforts towards shared outcomes. And, while…

The South East Lincolnshire Councils Shared Services Partnership is stated to be a “ground breaking”, “bold and ambitious” new alliance between the Boston, East Lindsey and South Holland councils – the largest collaborative local authority relationship of its kind in…

One of the key factors in creating a successful supplier relationship is to understand that the written contract terms with your supplier do not represent the final word on how your partnership should be maintained. If your supplier represents itself…

The Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) market in the UK today is worth c.£16bn and is expected to rise to c.£20bn over the next five years. It currently employs over 200,000 people in around 32,000 businesses and allows user-organisations across the…

The foundation of effective contract management is a suite of essential documents which allow managers to keep track of performance and expenditure on their contracts, while dramatically reducing the time required to do so. Key documents that support effective contract…

This is the final article in a series which has charted the rise of the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) market and technology outsourcing, from its early days and the aspirations of those who developed this new way of working across…

We have come a very long way since the early days of the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) market, but how much: has really changed for the better; and conversely, have ‘improvements’ been seen to have, in reality, just papered over…

You can’t really know where you are going until you know where you have been, as they say. So, by taking a look back at the origins of Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) and how the outsourcing market has evolved and…

Outsourced relationships can often be punctuated with opportunities for controversy. Having dealt with improving the performance of over 500 outsourcing relationships, evidence continues to teach us that more than 50% of these high-value contracts fail to achieve their expected outcomes…

One of the most common mistakes organisations make is not planning their vendor termination strategy as carefully as they planned choosing their strategic vendor in the first place. Getting out of the agreement (safely and quickly) often takes more work…

In July the NAO published a cross-governmental lessons-learned report dedicated to the question of how to ensure that when implementing digital change, major projects have a greater opportunity to achieve a positive outcome. It’s a vital document, seeing as the…

Effective contract and supplier management involves a number of facets. At its core, though, are two fundamental points: Define and maintain a clear purpose with your strategic contractor/supplier, so that roles and responsibilities between you remain aligned to the business…

The complexities of client/supplier relationships – between signing the contract and commencement of the implementation – can, in many cases, be distilled down to a key set of principles and ‘checklist’ of actions… these leads many to ask, “what is…

Your Challenge – You are overseeing a major project that involves a significant service delivery transformation or the procurement of a complex IT solution. You may be engaging in a new strategic supplier relationship or need to improve one that is…

Articles on the subject of a successful outsourcing partnership tend to deal with the timeline in segments – some will talk about essentials at the inception stage, while others will wax lyrical about ways to keep your supplier on your…

Less than half of all strategic supplier relationships achieve the business outcomes the client expects. Just let that sink in for a moment. This means that over fifty per cent of clients are wondering where it all went wrong. This…

While some people revel in breaking through established boundaries, the vast majority would prefer the stability and relative comfort of the status quo. Change may befall an organisation in a myriad of ways, but all are likely to bring with…

You may have heard the statistic that 70% of complex, large-scale digital transformation projects fail. This was presented in an article by strategic consultants McKinsey a few years ago and has been referenced many times since. However, it seems that…

They say that in a crisis you find out who you really are. In fact, US founding father, Thomas Paine said it far more eloquently than that in 1776 when he wrote: “These are the times that try men’s souls.…