Spend less to acquire value
that meets your needs

"Will Parsons and Mark Allen provided really useful input to our Best Value Review of Procurement and helped us achieve a much better result with more substantial savings identified through improved procurement practices"

Francis Murphy
Best Value Officer
Southend-on-Sea Borough Council

On-Call Procurement Support

On-call Procurement Support provides you with direct anytime access to our experienced procurement professionals who will help you achieve more value from your procurement activities.

We charge a fixed fee for a specific level of support. This could be anywhere from one or two days a month to three or four weeks, it depends on need and value. You will receive unconditional and flexible on-site and telephone/email support as and when you need it, without having to worry about exceeding your budget.

This service can be your sole procurement specific resource (as it was for South Staffordshire District Council) or supplement existing procurement resources. It is most effective when it lasts for at least six months, with the optimum being two to three years. This gives both parties sufficient time to agree and implement priorities, and for you to absorb the transfer of skills and knowledge.

Why on-call procurement support?

On-call Procurement Support helps you achieve valuable results as it:

• Provides immediate procurement/commercial advice and support
• Achieves a significant return on investment
• Supplements your skills and knowledge
• Develops your procurement expertise
• Challenges you to improve your current performance
• Is unencumbered by organisational politics
• Injects an urgency and discipline to your procurement activities

Achieve valuable results

One of the most valuable results you will achieve is the enduring legacy your revitalised and improved procurement expertise will provide, as it continues its self-perpetuating development. Other results you will achieve include:

• A clear and coherent approach to spending your money wisely
• Identifying priorities that will give you the best return
• Year-on-year cash savings from new or current contracts
• More resources to fund core services
• Improving the skills and knowledge of your procurement practitioners
• Identifying risks, minimising their impact or mitigating them
• Better results by improving the performance of suppliers

On-call Procurement Support is an all encompassing service that gives you the flexibility to apply our procurement expertise where and when you need it!

How we help

This depends on what you need; if you do not know then we help you identify this before you commit to the On-call Procurement Support service. To do this we will carry out a:

• Strategic review (fast track)
• Spend data analysis
• Skills and knowledge audit

The results of this enable us to give you an insight into the latent potential you have to achieve better results from your procurement activities. It also allows us to propose and provide an On-call Procurement Support service that maximises the return on your investment. The service we provide includes:

• Jointly formulating a clear and coherent procurement plan
• Advice and support when you need it; on-site, by email and by phone
• Developing your procurement expertise (e.g. training and mentoring)Regular spend data analyses, although we will develop your capability to do this
• Spend category management
• Actively supporting tenders; from your business case to writing tender documents to contract award
• Supporting negotiations to achieve better results from new and existing contracts

What you need

To get the very best from On-call Procurement Support you will need:

• Directors and senior managers that visibly and actively support procurement
• Procurement to be seen as important by the whole organisation
• Individuals willing and capable of developing their procurement expertise
• Access to relevant data and information
• A willingness to instigate and support changes
• Administrative support

For example

South Staffordshire District Council retained us, as their only procurement specific resource, for three years to provide an all encompassing procurement advice and support service. We spent between one and three days on site each month and provided additional support using phone calls and emails. This enabled us to support each department with advice and active hands-on support to help them buy more value at a lower cost. Over this period our direct influence resulted in cumulative cash savings of more than £200,000 with much more achieved indirectly by our training of enthusiastic purchasing practitioners. Also of significant value was the attention given to purchasing by the council's senior management team, who recognised the importance of good purchasing to their overall performance. They gave it a lot more time and attention, and consequently it acquired a higher priority across the council.