NHS England were seeking guidance in managing a yearly £11 billion procurement spend across 25,000 non-clinical suppliers.
With no central facility nor specialist expertise in place to manage, govern and control such a large budget, NHS England turned to Clear Solutions to help them create robust contract management and supplier relationship management systems.
It is no wonder there had been significant disagreement on obligations and dependencies when implementation was already under way as it was not previously possible to readily locate the contracted obligations until the contract management software and contract register was implemented.
Trying to be flexible and agreeing to variations without the proper governance and documentation was thought to be helpful to alleviate blockages in payment to suppliers but was actually making things worse.
Objectives
Implement a Purchase to Pay process with improved governance and use of technology for issue of POs, reconciliation of goods and payment.
Consultancy in mapping data flows and identifying requirements / success criteria for the Contract Register software application and Contract notices and Management toolkit.
Clear Solutions introduced a central hub to transform and rationalise the commercial contract management for all non-clinical yearly spending. This was done through creating best-practice management systems and management strategy toolkits that could be applied to every component of the procurement and supplier management process.
Specific areas addressed were:
Supplier segmentation based on value and risk analysis and mapping
Supplier performance and reporting systems
Purchase to payment systems and process design and implementation
There had been performance issues due to disagreement over what was committed but this was now mitigated by reference to the contract and the mechanisms in place to protect both parties, saving time and additional costs so budget was spent on non-clinical requirements, where it was much needed.
Services
- Contract management systems
- Supplier management processes
- Contract register implementation
- Kraljec Model prioritisation and classification of suppliers
- Purchase to Payment processes
- Data and business analytics
- Contractual notices
- Dashboard monitoring and escalation
Achievements
Established a successful ‘greenfield’ contract management team and supplier relationship function from the ground up, including implementing contract management systems and contractual notices based on risk value analysis of top NHS suppliers by spend.
Return on investment
Increased fraud detection
Increased budgeting accuracy
Speeded up payment of SMEs
Established a legacy of best practice contract and supplier management
Contractual notices
Worked to replace the interim team with permanent employees to further cement this best practice
