Helpful tips to make your strategic supplier relationships work really well

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

As you’ll no doubt have experienced for yourself, the success of a strategic supplier relationship starts with a strong foundation of good collaboration which, in turn, is driven by solid commercial trust. The key is making strategic contracts fit for…

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.…

A research report on ‘The value of supplier codes of conduct: supporting transparency and improving performance’, co-authored by sustainability, business and human rights consultancy Ardea International and the University of Westminster Business School, has presented some interesting analysis. It includes…

In the public sector, procurement should have, at its foundation, strictly process-orientated procedures, with clear supplemental processes to make sure that solutions and services purchased are fit for purpose, not just that they follow legal procurement compliance. However, if those…

It was reported that EY has been the focus of a request by the charity, ‘Spotlight on Corruption’ (SoC), to the Crown Commercial Service (CCS) – the government’s procurement body – for EY to be banned from bidding on any…

Once you have formally terminated the relationship, you need to treat the exit process as a key project in its own right. You will have developed a Business Case for the early contract termination and a well-considered exit plan. As with any project, the exit must have…

The Client-Side PFI Manager is the person in the client organisation with direct responsibility for managing the operational PFI contract. The management of operational PFI contracts consists of frequent, ad hoc and periodic activities. Frequent activities are those that need…

In March The Times reported that outsourcing giant Capita was continuing to go through a troubling period, with significant falls in revenues and headline profits necessitating further internal organisational changes. This may not be either surprising or hugely troubling for…

Prior to Covid taking hold, the retrospective view on over 11 years of public sector austerity looked bleak as a result of some of our friends in the banking sector taking major financial risks resulting in what was then an…

When times are tough, as they certainly have been over the last year, people tend towards one of two camps – those who are predominantly inward-looking, protecting what’s theirs (their home, their family, their friends), and those who are predominantly…

Your failing strategic supplier relationship is beyond repair and you have reached the point of terminating the contract. You want to make sure the exit goes as smoothly as possible in what might be a very challenging situation where emotions…

When public sector procurement is mentioned, it is often to discuss the complexities of compliance with strict processes and procedures and the challenges which may arise holistically when these are not followed as fastidiously as they might have been. Thoughts…

Client-supplier relationships come in many forms; however, it’s all too easy for them to end up being treated as merely ‘transactional’, where the client puts pressure on the supplier to achieve the lowest price and the supplier delivers the lowest…

Operational governance is the management framework within which decisions over assuring service delivery performance are made. It is one of the critical elements of any strategic supplier relationship where complex service provision is involved. Accountabilities and responsibilities associated with an organisation’s ‘business as usual’ (BAU) activities should…

You may be familiar with the concept of the Intelligent Client and the Intelligent Client Function (ICF), but what about the ‘Intelligent Supplier’ – would you know what to look for to determine if your strategic provider is operating as an Intelligent Supplier? Would you…

When we focus too much on the cost of a project and not enough on the value it produces, we ignore a whole host of less visible opportunities and risks, any one of which could spin a strategic relationship off…

New York-based turnaround management specialists, Alvarez & Marsal, were appointed as administrators of NMC Health after irregularities were discovered in the company’s accounts. By the end of 2020, it was reported they had issued a ‘preliminary notice’ of a potential…