Category Archives: Procurement Commentary
Francis Maude at PASC – select committee digs into UK government procurement
The UK parliament’s Public Administration Select Committee held the final hearing of their investigation into public sector procurement this week, and appropriately their witness was Francis Maude, the Minister with responsibility for the subject. As we’ve said many times, he is more interested in and knowledgeable about procurement than any other Minister we’ve had, and his hour or so on the topic was low key in style but quite illuminating. He got some good questioning from Bernard Jenkin, the Chair, but some of the other Committee members were poor in terms of their lack of any real insight or challenge. [...]
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The Rolling Stones, variable pricing and booking a hotel for the CEO!
We wrote in part 1 about the difficulty the Rolling Stones have had in selling tickets for their gigs in the US, and linked that to a debate about variable pricing strategies and how technology was helping some industries to differentiate better between customers prepared to pay different prices. What implications does this have for procurement people? Well, it highlights an issue around marginal costing and how procurement should be looking to take advantage of those opportunities. It highlights that economies of scale don’t go on indefinitely, and it is often better to be a relatively small buyer than a [...]
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Crown Commercial Representatives – 99 Problems (well, 9 issues anyway)
So , what do we think about the UK government’s appointment of new Crown Commercial Representatives? Here are a few questions. Not 99 problems maybe, as Jay-Z would put it, but certainly 9 issues. 1. Is there still significant cost to be taken out of government contracts, or has the first wave of CCR activity generated most of the benefit already? 2. Are the major suppliers going to feel even more victimised by getting set upon by these “heavies”, and less likely to offer any innovation to the government – will they just put “UK Government” firmly in the “cash [...]
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The NHS Procurement Strategy – a nation (still) waits
So what’s happened to the UK’s National Health Service Procurement strategy? The story so far… (you might want to get a cup of coffee and settle down, this might be a long one). April 2012 At a conference in Manchester, the new NHS procurement strategy is going to be announced. Instead, the excellent Beth Loudon from Department of Health has to explain that top NHS management wanted more discussion with the market, and more “meat” in the strategy so there would be a delay whilst… May 2012 NHS appoints Sir Ian Carruthers to conduct a “call for evidence” to help [...]
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Indirect Sourcing – readers comment on our briefing paper
Our last piece here around the recent Spend Matters / Xchanging briefing paper (“Indirect Category Sourcing Savings: Fact or Fiction?” – download it here) drew some really interesting comments, from some rather eminent procurement professionals. Many thanks to them. I’m going to feature those comments here today, and I’ll come back in part 2 and respond to some of the excellent points raised. You may remember that the research paper suggests that procurement should focus on managing the delivery from sourcing programmes, with a more structured approach and (critically) clearer measurement of benefits, including savings. So here are some of [...]
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Crown Commercial Representatives – male, pale and … very successful businessmen
If you’re thinking that we haven’t exactly been hot off the press with reporting on the appointment of six more UK government “Crown Commercial Representatives”, you’d be right. that’s because I’ve been working out just what exactly I think about it… They’re joining Cabinet Office to help central government manage their largest suppliers, and negotiate further savings, particularly in IT related areas. We understand they are in the main taking over work from current government CPOs, who have been doing this CCR role in addition to their departmental day jobs for the last couple of years. The roles were widely [...]
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Welcome to ProProcure, our new Spend Matters sponsor
Super observant readers will have spotted another new logo in our Associate Sponsor section over to the right of the page. Yes, we’re delighted to welcome ProProcure to the Spend Matters site. We featured the firm quite recently, here, where we described their interesting and niche market positioning. They provide cloud-based software that supports the collaborative procurement of marketing and brand related items, mainly for large multi-national corporates. Their growth demonstrates that meeting specific customer needs is still the number one factor in business success – and their product does just that, for a very particular community and requirement. We’re [...]
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ConsultancyONE finally complete – list of successful suppliers on framework published
Hooray! As thousands of management consultants dance in the streets (see picture), the full list of successful suppliers who have gained places on the UK government’s ConsultancyONE framework has now been released. I was expecting some sort of formal announcement, but it just seems to have been slipped out quietly to the providers and with this list on the Gov.uk website. Perhaps the government doesn’t want to draw attention to what has been a somewhat troubled procurement, ultimately requiring 18 months from start to finish. There are 15 separate Lots, ranging through functional consulting, audit, finance and multi-disciplinary work, and [...]
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Buying a Wedding Dress Spend Matters Style
This post is part of an ongoing series about “procuring” a wedding, Spend Matters-style. See previous posts here: Wedding Planning: Spend Matters Style Procuring the Perfect Chicago Wedding Venue Wedding Planning: Venue, Menu, Hotel Blocks, Stationary, Oh My! …and thank you so much for all of your advice and congratulations so far! Oh, the wedding dress. I didn’t think I’d spend what I spent. But before we get to that, here’s some background: I was going to get some minor alterations (shortening to cocktail length and then cutting the sleeves off) to my grandmother’s gorgeous lace wedding dress from 1955, [...]
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UK Government procurement – the anti-centralisation fightback starts!
After our Yes Minister homage earlier this week (here and here), covering the further centralisation of procurement in UK Government, it was interesting to see yesterday what might be the beginnings of a fight back by the departments against the increasingly ambitious and controlling Cabinet Office. Someone – or several someones – has obviously fed Sue Cameron at the Telegraph with some juicy titbits of anti-Cabinet Office information / propaganda (take your pick, depending with whom your sympathies lie). This is not surprising after the incredibly one-sided Times feature recently, that gave two pages over to what I can only [...]
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QinetiQ Commerce Decisions – CloudStore brings MOD sunshine!
The UK Government’s G-Cloud CloudStore seems to be reaching a critical mass and proving itself to be a success after a probably inevitably slow start. The new “G-Cloud III” list of suppliers goes live this week, but what is more impressive is that sales in March were £7M, compared to around £10M over the previous year or so since the initiative was first launched. And now with Francis Maude announcing a “cloud first” policy last week, that growth is likely to accelerate. All central government departments in the UK will now have to prioritise cloud services when buying IT. It’s [...]
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A Spend Matters Book Club?
Should we start a Spend Matters Book Club? What do you think – is there an appetite for that? I’m not suggesting we go off and read Hilary Mantel or the latest hilarious exploits of a single mum trying to cope with… you know the sort of thing. We’d stick to procurement related books, maybe extending it to business or other factual books that have some relevance to our area. We could choose a book, maybe every couple of months, and then we could review it here (with the ability for anyone to contribute to the review). Perhaps we arrange [...]
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Yes Minister – Sir Humphrey raises his glass to centralised government Procurement
(Especially for the UK Bank Holiday – our latest homage to the brilliant Yes Minster and Yes Prime Minister series, written by Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn). - Humphrey, do come in. Thank you Minister. I’ve brought Colin with me. Colin is our Commercial Director. - Really? I have a Commercial Director? Yes, we used to call him Head of Purchasing but we thought Commercial sounded more… dynamic and twenty-first century somehow. - Well it’s nice to meet you Colin. Now, this is all about the new Cabinet Office plans for greater centralisation of procurement isn’t it? Francis Maude, master [...]
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Procurement: To Protect and Serve
(It’s almost two weeks since the Boston Marathon bombing – here’s another brilliant article from my Spend Matters US colleague, Pierre Mitchell. Read him regularly at Spend Matters US and on our subscription site, Spend Matters PRO). As a runner and Boston-area resident (many of those years living in Watertown) who has been emotionally affected by the recent bombing like everyone here, I’ve struggled with how to deal with the event. Our vocational lives and our emotional lives are inextricably linked, but although I have written dozens of blog posts in my head on the topic, it just hasn’t felt [...]
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Putting category management in its place
(We’re pleased to feature this guest article from Ahmed Ali, MCIPS MSc, procurement professional and freelance writer. It is a little longer than our usual pieces, but with the current debate around category management – see here and here - it seemed particularly relevant and interesting. It first appeared in the IFPSM ezine www.ifpsm.org). There appears to be a split on the discussion over the value of category management. On the one hand you have staunch advocates that see category management as the pinnacle of world class procurement. At the other end of the spectrum there are sceptics that argue [...]
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Supply Chain Mapping from Achilles – our Adrian Chamberlain interview (part 2)
Following our recent interview, we talked in part 1 yesterday about Adrian Chamberlain, the CEO at Achilles, and how he sees their common platform benefiting clients and indeed suppliers. And there are other interesting developments going on across the firm and their client base. One is “Supply Chain Mapping (SCM)”. “This came out of the terrible Tsunami in Japan in 2011” explained Chamberlain. “Some businesses – including even the huge automotive firms – realised that they didn’t understand their supply chains well enough. They knew who their 1st tier suppliers were, and where they were situated, but they didn’t have [...]
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- From Hubris to High Court (almost) – The Story of Southwest One (Part 1) : James Garrett said: That the wheels came off Southwest One was never a surprise to those who followed its shak... more
- From Hubris to High Court (almost) – The Story of Southwest One (Part 1) : Prof Dexter Whitfield said: I find the idea that the Conservatives 'sabotaged' the contract as fanciful and plainly in... more
- The NHS Procurement Strategy – a nation (still) waits : Simon Walsh said: The Health Care Supply Association ( HCSA) met with Dr Dan Poulter MP - Parliamentary Unde... more
- From Hubris to High Court (almost) – The Story of Southwest One (Part 1) : Dave Orr said: Duh! Sorry. The correct link is http://www.computerweekly.com/blogs/public-sector/2013... more
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