At PUBLIC, we work with authorities on a wide range of procurement and commercial challenges.
We've consistently found that the biggest challenge for procurement teams - and the biggest enabler of better commercial outcomes - is better access to data.
First of all, procurement teams can only improve what they can measure. This means building a single, reliable picture of your spend across all of your different contracts, vendors and categories. This is especially important for their 'tail-spend' (high volume, low value spend) which is frequently left un-analysed and un-optimised.
Second, better data can allow procurement teams to benchmark and compare their spend with other authorities, or the private sector. This allows authorities to compare their spend profiles with their peers, and establish more transparent and open pricing conversations with their vendors.
Crucially, there are also compliance and legislative requirements for authorities to better capture and manage their data. In the UK, authorities currently have statutory requirements to publish financial data, but this will only become more important. As part of the upcoming UK Procurement Act, authorities will need to capture and publish procurement data in an OCDS format, covering the entire publishing lifecycle from planning to award, to management.
Finally, procurement data is also a critical enabler of sustainability and social value outcomes. Public authorities - which jointly spend hundreds of billions of pounds a year - are the largest buyers of goods, works and services. From pens and pencils, to transport fleets, to construction services, the average local council manages tens of millions of pounds of annual spend that can be leveraged to drive more sustainable outcomes.
But most authorities struggle to make the most of these opportunities. The problem can start with the source data, with procurement and spend data sitting in a wide range of different systems, which are not joined-up or integrated. This might involved different classification systems, vendor naming conventions, or other challenges that make joining up data impossible. Authorities can struggle to assign social value or sustainability outcomes to their data, with a lack of clear measurement or reporting frameworks. And even with all the data cleaned and consolidated, it can be virtually impossible to derive meaningful insights at this kind of scale of spend (tens of thousands of transaction lines).
To help authorities to tackle these challenges, and make the most out of the opportunities for spend data, we have partnered with best-in-class spend management tool, Ignite Procurement. In particular, we'll be working with Ignite to help authorities to meet their new data transparency requirements in the new UK Procurement Act, and to help them measure the social value and sustainability outcomes of their spend. From the smallest local council, to the largest central government department, we are working to solve their spend data problems.
Our first project together has seen us work with Teignbridge District Council, South Hams District Council and West Devon Borough Council to better measure spend across their tri-council procurement services. We analysed tens of thousands of financial transactions to help the three councils to optimise their spend, especially their long tail-spend, identify opportunities for consolidating spend across the councils, and estimate their total carbon emissions due to procurement.
You can read more about our work, and its impact here.
Our work with Ignite Procurement will allow us to promote more transparent, intelligent and sustainable procurement. And that will be better for our public services, and for the planet.
A practical guide for evaluating digital, data and technology projects in the UK public sector; in this article, the guidebook’s authors, Johnny Hugill and Dr. Steffen Triebel explain its context and objectives.
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How can the UK government leverage the thriving domestic FinTech sector to improve its own financial systems?
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Implementing more sustainable trading and supply chains has become a key priority for modern businesses and governments. And new policies like Germany’s Supply Chain Act have begun to formalise legal requirements for international trading actors. But little work has been done to-date to develop government customs and documentation systems that properly capture, record and monitor this data. This new trend, known as ‘green customs’, presents a major opportunity for the UK Government as it scopes out a vision for a new UK Single Trade Window. In the second article of our Single Trade Window blog series, we take a look at how the UK could make this a reality.
The transformation of supply chain data sharing across sectors is crucial for international trade that is digitised, frictionless, and secure.
In June we kicked off our brand new GovStart programme - taking on a cohort of 34 startups across a number of different sectors. In this blog post we delve into the solutions of our 7 Procurement and Business Systems startups spanning areas such as Public Procurement, financial management, Property Data and Payments.
Sustainable public procurement has never been more of a priority. In this blog, we dive into the challenges councils face in implementing it. We also outline some of the key steps councils can take to ensure sustainability is embedded in every step of the procurement process.
This article by Nicola Villa, Executive Vice President, Strategic Growth at Mastercard outlines why supporting SME procurement is so important, and highlights some key takeaways from the Global SME Procurement Benchmark report!
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Procurement Bites: How can public authorities better collaborate on procurement?
While private sector companies have realised the importance of looking to their supply chain to advance sustainability efforts, global government action on procurement has been generally slower. As this can often be a daunting process - and to mark the first ever World Sustainable Procurement Day - we want to share some key insights from our work helping the public sector tackle this challenge.
