Procurement Improvement

Analysis of the IT services and infrastructure landscape at the TUC as part of our strategy development had revealed the opportunity for a broad and holistic upgrade approach, involving consolidation of several service elements. Our recommendations for market entry were endorsed by the new vCIO and sanctioned by the TUC management team. The desired outcome would be a ‘one-stop shop’ covering WAN, secure hybrid hosting, Office 365 with Skype for Business and a managed backup/DR solution in a three to five-year agreement, with built-in benchmarking, renegotiation and termination options.

Following Acert’s strategic consultancy report for the TUC in Summer 2016, the senior executive team were keen to establish the IT steering group and appoint a part-time (virtual) Chief Information Officer, as well as to commission work on the IT risk register. Earlier analysis having revealed some onerous service agreements no longer fit for purpose, there was also an appetite to negotiate early savings where possible.

Our client needed specialist procurement help to acquire a cloud automation solution that would enable them to offer their own clients faster and more agile hosting solutions – with speed to revenue as a primary driver.

A key business partner made us aware that a number of organisations in the hospitality sector were in the market for new telecoms provision. We knew that there was an opportunity for significant savings improvement through collaborative aggregation. We therefore approached each organisation with the savings proposition and established the core membership of an ad hoc procurement group.

Following a successful telecoms procurement engagement with this national hospitals client, we were invited to propose for procurement of their MPLS WAN, as the current agreement was expiring soon.

Acert’s initial work on spend analysis with this London-based private hospitals client had revealed a significant expenditure category in printing and copying. Further investigation established that current agreements for copiers and printers were over-extended and under-performing. The large number of individual printers in place also indicated large benefit potential from a device consolidation and managed print solution initiative.

CEVA is one of the world’s leading logistics and supply-chain management companies and has over 40,000 employees spread across more than 160 countries. With a long history of outsourcing its IT Infrastructure and applications support services in a piecemeal fashion, CEVA wanted to transform all its arrangements into a single global managed services agreement. In addition, it sought to move away from all existing input-based charging models, replacing them with an outcome-based, solution oriented contract.

This private hospitals group provides secure mental health services at its facilities throughout the UK.  With a long-term copier/printer agreement expiring soon the Finance Director and Head of IT were keen to seek savings and capture the benefits of a managed print solution.

The Fostering Network is the UK’s leading fostering charity. Following a strategic review of their internal IT, they concluded that they urgently needed to refresh their infrastructure and systems and that a formal procurement process was required. Acert was recommended to design and support the market entry programme.