Last week John Collington, the Head of Procurement for the Cabinet Office’s Efficiency and Reform Group (ERG) and Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply CEO, David Noble, announced they were joining forces to help improve public sector buying. Their aim is to transform how government buys common goods and services through centralised category management, standardisation of specification, and aggregation of spend, to deliver savings from the baseline of £13 billion, in the region of 25 per cent over four years.
This collaboration follows John Collington’s announcement at London’s Efficiency, Reform & Accountability conference on 24 November, where he informed delegates of his plans to address 9 core spending areas, including office supplies, print management, advertising and media, by September 2011.
This is good news for Claritum, given our experience and success in the public sector, and one of our public sector clients, Ealing Council, is excited to be ahead of the game.
Having used Claritum since 2008 Ealing Council has been able to demonstrate the benefits of Claritum for some time, and the Council is now embarking on deployment of additional functionality, after reaching out to Claritum for ideas of how best to deliver additional cost reduction and value for money.
Claritum proposed a complete solution for Ealing encompassing branded templates, user portal interface, internal print management and costing and charging. This was to be added to the existing Claritum deployment which ensures sourcing and procurement meet corporate requirements and deliver best value on every transaction. A combination of matrix and bid costings covers a wide range of media from photography and design to complicated mailings and distributions. An interface to internal council systems provides semi-automated financial transactions.
The bottom line benefits to Ealing will be further cost savings and process efficiencies. Less tangible but increasingly valuable benefits will be derived from strengthening the Ealing brand and improving the effectiveness of communications media.
Ralph Brandhorst, Senior Production Manager for Ealing Council said, ”we estimate the reduction in direct and indirect costs will be many times the costs of the system improvements as well as providing many non cost benefits. It is an area many public sector organisations are looking at”.
The London Borough of Ealing is the largest in west London, third largest of the London boroughs, with 310,000 residents, 13,365 businesses and a budget of £266 million.
Former Home Office group commercial director John Collington became the most senior procurement figure in the UK government on 1 September when took up his current role. His remit is to spearhead a cross-government approach to procurement and its supply chain to make the best use of its combined purchasing power and get better value for money.
