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…

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…

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…

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.…

A wave of media attention has been building over the last 18 months on the financial stability of a number of outsourcing giants, including Serco, G4S, Capita, Carillion and Interserve. Increasing attention is being focused on the last of this…

IT enabled business change projects necessitate some of the most complex relationship arrangements of any outsourcing project. Often this is because of the tendency for such business critical IT projects to stretch boundaries, to look to create better, faster and…

In June we wrote an article titled NAO Report: NHS England and Capita Outsourcing Challenges, 4 Lessons which looked into the outsourcing contract issues faced by both NHS England and Capita when they tried to transform primary care support services for…

The day to day pressures of managing a PFI contract tends to lead one to focus on operational issues, yet the importance of devoting considerable time and energy to keeping on top of PFI costs cannot be undervalued. Take a…

Not every project can be handled in-house. There will be times when the resources, skill-sets and specific expertise of strategic suppliers will be needed and your business case will help you come to that conclusion. Once you have come to…

Npower has faced many challenges over the last few years. At the centre of the most recent of these is the reportedly long-running billing issues the company and its customers have suffered from since IBM installed a new SAP billing…

Reports suggest that it has not been a good year for global outsourcing giant Capita. What with the company’s first profit warning in September, reported project issues and what seems to be a weakening market across some of its core…

Far too many outsourced relationships fail to achieve the expectations of at least one of the parties involved in the process. And, no doubt, this was a driver behind the creation of the first International Standard for outsourcing – ISO…

September 2012 David Taylor Smith (Chief Operating Officer) Fired after Olympics blunder | May 2013 Nick Buckles (Group CEO) Resigns | October 2013 Richard Morris (Regional CEO) Quit in wake of the tagging controversy | June 2014 Eddie Aston (Regional…

Fixed fees are often seen as the ultimate goal for buyers when negotiating a new project with a vendor. But while fixed-fee projects can offer a degree of certainty on both sides, if needs and costs are not determined with…

When complex strategic relationships between public bodies and private sector vendor organisations start to veer off track it can often seem too daunting a task to refocus vendor performance on the original business outcomes expected and agreed. With productivity levels…

The perception of honesty and integrity in the outsourcing sector has been shaken in the wake of the negative media coverage of Serco and G4S and the announcement on 12 Dec. that both firms lost their tagging contracts. While many…

If you are to believe the statistics published on problematic big IT projects – whether a commercial sector Enterprise Software implementation (ERP), a Local Authority Client Relationship System (CRM) or an NHS Trust dealing with a problematic Electronic Patient Records…

As I recently read through yet another Public Accounts Committee (PAC) report uncovering yet more failures of Government procurement and project failures, I found myself wondering whether the squandering of the public purse is ever going to be addressed with…

The Post Office recently hit the headlines again after admitting that IT training and support failings may have resulted in some users of its Horizon system being wrongly accused of false accounting. After undergoing a forensic accounting investigation, it now…

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…

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 and sub-contractors. Yes – 2e2 failed as a prime…

Although Councils are tasked with slashing budgets whilst maintaining (or even increasing) the quality of public services, the endorsement of local authority strategic commissioning as a potential solution is seen by many councillors as dangerous ground upon which to tread.…