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. This blog sets out essential steps to take before you walk into a…

Must-Know Elements for Building a Risk-Aware Procurement Strategy It has never been more important for your project to have a robust, tried and tested procurement strategy that you can rely on. Agreement on a roadmap for the way you conduct…

Understand the risks and rewards of each approach to procuring ERP software Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) procurement is one of the most ambitious and challenging undertakings for any organisation. The process of acquiring a single system that spans the entirety…

The Benefits and Risks of Moving to SaaS for Mission-Critical Applications We recently wrote an article on Moving from On-Premise to SaaS – How Insights from Disputes can Safeguard Your Organisation. While that article centres around the potential for disputes…

To achieve optimum project performance in complex and strategic supplier relationships, you need to enlist the help of skilled people, placed in the right roles, while allowing them the freedom necessary to bring their skills and expertise to bear on…

Large, complex contract relationships are notoriously difficult to predict successful outcomes on. Many will make it through to a successful conclusion, some will fail spectacularly, and others will quietly underachieve. In this article we examine the smart way to use…

While large single supplier outsourcing relationships were all the rage a few years ago, we are seeing clients increasingly opting for either multi-sourcing or bringing services back in-house. So the question remains for many organisations: whether insourcing, outsourcing or some form…

Developing the infrastructure within your organisation to transition from on-premise servers to cloud-based hosted systems comes with significant advantages. However, when you’re procuring potentially complex cloud solutions, particularly Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), there are also a multitude of challenges…

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…

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,…

Outsourcing is a tempting proposition for any company that feels the strain of a bloated workforce and high service delivery costs. After all, the theoretical arguments in favour of outsourcing are compelling – you leverage the expertise of an external…

With Brexit, local elections, superpower posturing and international poisoning scandals to push the news media forward, the troubles caused by Carillion will seem like a long time ago to most. But, for the company’s employees, its suppliers whose businesses relied…

Many pressures beset those responsible for large-scale projects, forcing them to choose between a fastidious approach to procurement and project management, and meeting the time restrictions or budgetary constraints they are often required to work under. These are the circumstances…

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…

The Conservative government has, for the best part of a decade, been fixated on the debt the country has got itself into. In his Spring Budget, Chancellor Philip Hammond announced that national debt stood at a figure of nearly £1.7…

The National Audit Office (NAO) recently published an insightful report on the state of commercial and contract management best practice in the public sector. We have developed a number of articles on the subject matter contained within this report –…

When setting up any transformational programme or partnership, one preliminary aspect that can’t be overstated is the need for stakeholder communication and collaboration. Unfortunately, there seem to be many in the NHS procurement community who believe that the Department of…

The collapse of UnitingCare – the multi-million pound collaboration between an NHS consortium and Cambridgeshire and Peterborough CCG to provide ‘older people’s and adult community services’ in the region – has had an unprecedented impact on the sector. It has…

Even before the age of austerity, the public sector has often had to find ways to do more with less. And now, this remit is more crucial than ever. In an era when public funding has been cut sharply, many…

October 2016 is set to be the start of a new shared-services agreement between the local authorities of Haringey, Islington and Camden, a partnership that has broadly promised to save them a total of £6m a year. And while the…

In the face of growing perceived threats to security and defence the e-Borders project was conceived to “create a joined-up modernised intelligence-led border control and security framework” tracking passengers as they travelled to our shores by air, rail or sea,…

In December of 2014, we waxed lyrical about the importance of an ICF Team. We even went as far as to say that it’s the number one lesson that organisations would do well to learn in 2015. Truthfully, we haven’t…

When faced with the task of sourcing a new provider for an important and complex project, there are many points that need to be seriously considered. However, in our experience, there is one key area in particular that is consistently…

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…

On the ‘What We Do’ section of their Home page, the CCS state: “The Crown Commercial Service (CCS) brings together policy, advice and direct buying; providing commercial services to the public sector and saving money for the taxpayer.” Saving money…

We have already gone into quite some detail about the new EU Procurement directive due to hit our shores in the very near future – in fact, Cabinet Office consultations suggest that early 2015 is now more likely for their…

Preliminary Market Engagement (PME) is an incredibly useful step in the procurement process, especially when one of the more restrictive procedures is to be selected. However, essential though it may be, PME has until now been largely ignored. New EU…

The degree to which organisations engage in the strategic commissioning process can greatly affect the future of their service delivery partnership, their relationship with the service provider, and can even dictate whether they save money or incur costs that they…

Big changes are afoot for the public sector procurement process after a whole new raft of legislation was approved by the European Parliament in January. The most recent of these directives, to be implemented by each Member State within the…

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…

This blog post is the fourth in a series that has looked at some of the most significant upcoming changes to the EU Procurement Rules Directive* and discussed the possible impacts across the Public Sector. In this concluding post, we’ll…

This blog post is the third in a series that will assess some of the most significant changes to the new EU Procurement Directive* and examines the possible impact across the Public Sector. This article highlights the proposed changes to…

A new EU Procurement Directive* is close to being agreed and is likely to come into force by the end of the year. This blog post is the second in a series (click here for the first one) that will discuss some of…

A new EU procurement Directive is close to being agreed; as a result, new EU Procurement Rules are set to replace existing Public Sector procurement terms later this year (*subject to ratification; see foot note). The proposed changes will affect…

Most organisations, whether in the public or private sector, are under extreme pressure to cut service costs – and quickly. But they also remain under pressure to keep service levels as high as they possibly can. And minimise complaints from…

Outsourcing has once again been in the public eye due to two recent high profile project failures. Last month, MI5 abandoned its reported £90m digital records management system over concerns that implementation of the system would lead to an “intelligence…

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.…

In the past few weeks we have explored how cloud computing procurement can go wrong and how an adjusted approach to the same situation can result in a beneficial outcome. However, we ended last week’s post with a disclaimer —…

The Government’s decision to pull out of letting the West Coast Main Line contract to FirstGroup is a costly and high profile example of the ramifications of a formal legal challenge on a flawed procurement process. This is quite a back-down…