Helpful tips to make your strategic supplier relationships work really well

We are living through unprecedented times. Britain is in ‘lockdown’; all but ‘those who cannot work from home’ are being asked to stay at home and the government is paying companies to encourage staff and non-key workers onto furlough leave…

The London Stock Market is in challenged circumstances due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) being declared a pandemic. Even before this, Capita’s share value had declined significantly, only to fall even further (in amongst the rest of the world’s stock markets)…

Approximately 10 years ago, the Home Office gave the green light to a programme of modernisation within the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) to improve efficiencies and reduce costs. This programme was initiated a couple of years later. Eight years…

Cases of coronavirus, or COVID-19, are surging past 115,000 across the globe with over 4,000 whose lives have been claimed. Fortunately, c.65,000 people have recovered. The World Health Organization (WHO) is designating the chances of the coronavirus becoming a global…

The bedrock of Britain’s nuclear defence programme is Trident’s Continuous At-Sea Deterrence (CASD). The principle is that at all times, there will be at least one nuclear submarine at sea on patrol. However, a recent National Audit Office (NAO) report…

When it comes to managing the costs of services within the public sector, we all know there are many challenges to face. Juggling the goals of lowering costs so that scarce funds can be reinvested into a region, coupled with…

When you recognise that your outsourced/major projects relationship is not performing to expectations, do you go on the charm offensive, crack the whip to bring them back in line, or do you start considering alternative options? Early termination of complex…

Given the length and scope of PFI contracts, change is inevitable, so the effective administration of PFI change management, in terms of both the change process and its associated costs, is fundamental to successful PFI contract management. In this article…

How much do you know about what’s really going on with your strategic supplier relationship? Do you trust your supplier implicitly when they report on progress against your business outcomes, send through requests for payments and inform you of costs?…

Twelve months ago, we published an article titled Post Office Horizon IT System; Legal fees of £3m and 2-years of legal action; 3 key lessons learned. It looked into the claims by subpostmasters that the Post Office’s £1bn Horizon IT…

I was quite excited about the ‘street talk’ regarding the about-to-be-released IACCM Contracting Principles framework. The level of expertise on the IACCM Steering Committee and Advisory Board appears unparalleled. So, I thought, at last, an industry body has taken the…

A recent article in Computing highlighted the stark reality of just how much we continue to rely on technology. It was reported that a failure in the Electronic Patient Records – EPR System at King’s College Hospital meant that patients…

When you think of accidents and the space programme, most people of a certain age will remember the Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster of ’86, when the craft disintegrated just 73 seconds into the launch, due to an O-ring failure. The…

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) is the UK government department responsible for implementation of government defence policy and for the British Armed Forces. The MoD manages the day to day running of the armed forces, contingency planning and defence procurement.…

With the elections on the way, the NHS has predictably become a political football with accusations and counter accusations flying around in the mediasphere. One of the major points of contention is private-sector involvement in this much-loved public institution. The…

In a recent PAC (Public Accounts Committee) report titled Brexit Consultancy Costs, the committee brought to light the government’s £97m spend on consultancy firms (up to April 2019). It suggested this spend seemed to fail the government’s own standards in…

The Salvation Army is an amazing organisation that supports the most vulnerable in our communities. It is now an entity that turns over some £300m, has over 8,000 suppliers, each of which gets a share of the £160m it is…

Having dealt with improving the performance of over 500 complex supplier relationships after the event of them already having been contracted, evidence continues to teach us that more than 50% of these high value contracts and critical service delivery relationships,…

The ‘will-they-won’t-they’ of political discourse these days, whether on the subject of Brexit or an election, has kept the media busy. You’ll often see reporting in one paper something that’s the polar opposite of what’s reported in another, as rumours…

This is the second of two articles on the subject of the role of Intelligent Client Function (ICF) teams in managing the all too often complicated supplier/client relationship. The first article was titled ‘The 8 Intelligent Client Functions Skills to…

A Race to the Bottom on Price In recent years the trend in the outsourcing market has seen a race to the bottom on price. Certainly in the public sector this is due to austerity, as public sector entities were…

This will not come as a surprise to many out there, but complex supplier relationships are, well, complex in nature and, therefore, will naturally be difficult to manage.   If you have ever been involved in a sizeable client/strategic supplier…

‘It’s not the theory, it’s the execution’ is the essence of an article on outsourced IT that I read the other day in Public Technology. It made a poignant point about the difference between political and actual reality when it…

Although, the current economic uncertainty has made organisations more cautious about entering into new outsourcing relationships, the total value of Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) and IT Outsourcing deals signed in the UK in the first half of 2019 reached £1.64…

You may have experienced the sinking feeling that a strategic supplier relationship is not going the way you had hoped (and indeed planned for). In fact, you may well be experiencing that feeling at present. That being the case, it…

According to the Government Technology Innovation Strategy policy paper, published in June, the UK is “a world leader in using innovative techniques enabled by technology to deliver outstanding public services”. The Government Digital Service (GDS) was created to support this…

  In June 2018, control over the UK military’s Defence Fire and Rescue Services (DFRS) was awarded to Capita by the Ministry of Defence (MoD), but almost immediately that decision was called into question. Financial health warnings were cited as…

We have been engaged with many organisations to find fit for purpose solution partners to help them on their digital transformation journeys. However, we often come up against a key dilemma; some organisations focus almost entirely on the systems they…

Seven years ago, in 2012, the British Army turned to outsourcing giant Capita for help in recruiting more regulars and reserves into its ranks. The Recruiting Partnership Project (RPP) was launched – a ten-year collaboration costing £1.3bn in its term.…

Your strategic supplier in whatever project you have decided to look for assistance on, is a linchpin to its success, to the value optimisation that is achieved throughout the process, and to the outcomes that are actually achieved. Choose your…

When you watch any of the multitude of medical TV shows, they will always wax lyrical about the need for early detection to minimise the impact of an illness or even to save a patient’s life. But a recent Public…

The vast majority of outsourced relationships and complex projects are lengthy entities, often lasting five, ten, twenty years or more. It is likely that what may have suited your strategic partnership in the beginning will have moved on with what’s…

The Retail Times recently ran a story on the state of IT projects in their sector titled ‘UK retailers spend almost £827,000 on failed digital transformation projects’. This was an average for each project the retailers invested in. Retailers Putting…

A number of recent failed IT projects have left a bad taste in the mouths of many in the Scottish political world. None more so than the report Audit Scotland published about the work Capita undertook for the Scottish Public…

According to the Financial Times (FT), on Wednesday 3 July Serco announced “it had reached a deal with the Serious Fraud Office in which it was hit with a £19.2m fine plus costs for three offences of fraud and two…

In our recent blog ‘Roadmap to More Successful Strategic Outsourcing Relationships’, we discussed a top-level view of the steps any organisation should take to improve their chances of project success when working with outsourced partners, then pointed to our white…

Multibillion-dollar software company Oracle seems to have recently been under the media spotlight for both good and not-so-good reasons. On the one hand, it has just reported better than expected revenues and its highest growth rate since 2011. On the…

Benjamin Franklin is famously quoted as saying “… nothing is certain except death and taxes”. I would go so far as to add one more to that list: ‘change’. While resisted by many, feared by others, and exploited by some,…

We have noticed (and continue to encourage) a steady increase in the use of social enterprise companies in the day-to-day service delivery activities of the modern-day organisation/business. Where profits and positioning were once the unchallenged, primary goals, it seems that…

In the wake of many costly failed major projects, reported regularly in the media, it is more important than ever to have a tried and tested, effective, procurement strategy that you can rely on. How does yours stack up? Do…