One-Step-at-a-Time in more detail

Supplier Analysis and Impact Assessment

We carry out an analysis of your suppliers using the data from your financial ledger. This identifies the immediate opportunities to influence department spend behaviour and make immediate savings.

As part of the analysis we also assess the potential impact of e-procurement on your local business community, identifying the local SMEs that would be at risk from rationalisation, so that you can develop a procurement strategy linked to your community plan as required by the National Procurement Strategy. We have the expertise to guide you through the legal and policy issues surrounding this complex area.

Business Case

We use the supplier data to help you develop your business case for a low-cost e-procurement solution that will bring you rapid benefits. This includes benchmarking of current costs to understand where the ‘low-hanging fruit' savings lie and helping to form an implementation plan to gain these. This will be essential to acertain the performance improvements that will need to be proved for future CAPs.

If you are a District we use our expertise to help you develop a collaborative approach with neighbouring Districts and perhaps the County. If you are a larger Borough or Unitary, we look at the benefits of collaborating with neighbouring councils and other public sector organisations in your area.

One of the secrets to success in developing a business case is obtaining buy-in and commitment from the organisation. We help to identify where process time savings can be translated into real improvement in meeting service delivery targets, securing the support of key spending departments for change.

e-Ordering

We help you plan and quickly take the essential first step - the relatively small-scale change from manual requisitioning to an online free-text ordering system. This provides real trading data within months, from which you can start to influence and improve your organisation's buying efficiency.

The e-ordering system automates the purchase order and approvals process, capturing your transactions and passing commitment accounting data through to your financial management system. Initially, buyers will continue to use the suppliers they like using, and suppliers will not notice any difference. The buyer and supplier ‘road-blocks' to roll-out disappear. In most implementations the first cost benefits will come within months, paying for further improvements.

The technology can be provided by your financial systems provider or by a marketplace provider – as independent consultants we would help you source the best solution for your needs. Where a longer-term solution is planned which will provide full end-to-end capability, we might suggest an interim solution to get those 'quick wins'.

Alignment

We have found that the conventional way local authorities have attempted to implement e-procurement misses out a vital step - alignment. If you just re-engineer the business processes and introduce the new technology using traditional communication programmes, take-up is poor and the desired benefits will not accrue.

The Alignment programme takes staff and managers from different departments through a 3-part awareness and alignment process and assures success:

• An initial half-day workshop
• A modular online self-teach programme
• A final wrap-up half-day workshop

The programme allows staff and managers to become confident with the new concepts and explore the changes to their jobs while acknowledging their importance to the organisation.

This is not a training programme in how to use e-procurement – it is an alignment programme. By giving staff the chance to discuss the issues affecting them and understand their role in the new e-enabled organisation, you can resolve potential conflicts that will hinder cross-department working and joint ownership of the changes needed.

Implementation

Assuming that you do not already have solutions in place, we can help you source, plan and implement the other components which, together, provide the end-to-end benefits from e-procurement.

These include using e-Tendering, linking your e-Ordering system to your financial management system and using an e-Marketplace to channel your catalogue and Request for Quote purchasing activity.

We have the software tools and skills available to allow you to automate the processes across your entire supplier relationship cycle, from selecting and shortlisting suppliers, management and evaluation of tenders, to contract management, performance monitoring and supplier feedback.

We advise on coding standards and provide a low-cost product coding service, which ensures accurate data for analysis of what you buy, to enable smarter procurement decision-making. No need to worry about training buyers to use the right codes.

Suppliers are well-catered for too. We understand how to join up buy-side and sell-side solutions, to enable you and your suppliers both to benefit – a more sustainable model than one which simply passes your costs on to your suppliers.

We are working to help councils set up Kick-Start TM supplier recruitment and accreditation initiatives. This enables local and other quality suppliers to be e-commerce enabled at a minimal cost and with immediate benefits to both sides, including merchant accreditation and e-invoicing capability. Their products and services become available online to a wider audience at a reduced cost and you are able to take advantage of this in your procurement.

Reach out programmes are being designed for a number of councils which have carried out a supplier analysis and impact assessment and now want to increase the number of local BME-owned businesses bidding for council work. We are working with representative organisations, local chambers and national government-backed projects and can provide advice and support if this is a priority for your council.

Ongoing Savings

An e-procurement system will only provide ongoing savings if it is used to power the work of a professional procurement manager. From the start, we can offer this quality of procurement advice and support to enable you to negotiate better deals and take advantage of the council's buying power, either on your own or, more usually, as part of a collaborative group. If you do not have skilled procurement managers, we can provide this resource to help you to carry on saving money from your e-procurement programme, year on year.

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