Public Sector Procurement Consultancy.

Procurement in the public sector.

Procuring goods or services for government departments, agencies and public bodies in the public sector can be a complex process. There are guidelines, policies and governance to adhere to and internal processes and procedures to follow.

This can lead to lengthy and costly procurement processes.

At eXceeding, we have a team of category experts who are dedicated to public sector procurement support. We understand the steps it takes to manage a fully compliant Public Contracts Regulations (PCR ) procurement process.

To drive faster, flexible and compliant procurement in the public sector, we have access to a variety of frameworks according to your needs.

Alternatively, our experts can help you establish your own fully compliant strategic procurement frameworks.

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Common challenges faced when purchasing in the public sector include:

1. Understanding the complexities of compliance and frameworks.
   Public sector procurement leaders need to keep up with the different regulations, guidance and public sector frameworks, as well as being adept at translating these into the varying needs of the departments they represent. This requires a level knowledge of the public sector procurement process, as well as the strategic organisational needs and category knowledge of specific department functions.
2. Finding the right data to make the right decisions.
   Quite often data from within an authority or office is held in a number of disparate systems. Getting good quality data to inform your decision-making can therefore be very challenging and subsequent actions may not have the best outcomes.
3. Defining ‘value for money’.
   Whilst costs are a big driver of many public sector procurement decisions, so are service levels, risk and reputation, sustainability and corporate social responsibility (CSR). It is therefore difficult to define the right combination of these variables and prove ‘value for money’.
4. Finding the right supplier.
   Creating a clear brief which focuses on your desired outcomes is the first part of your process, but often the difficulty lies in finding the right solution. Sometimes suppliers are not large enough to service national or regional requirements. Or you may have a low value tender and seek to support local SME suppliers, but are challenged with understanding who is available in your area.
5. Procurement capacity.
   With resources within public sector being continually stretched, having the time to fully focus on any part of the procurement process can be challenging. Managing full public sector tender processes can take up quite a bit of resource and often procurement teams are focused on getting things done than having time to collaborate with others and have the space for innovation.
6. Managing supplier relationships.
   With the additional challenges of changing governance and compliance, consistent supplier relationship management is vital in the public sector. In order to maximise the budget and maintain service level agreements, ongoing communication is needed between the organisation and the supplier, but often this gets neglected due to the demands of the day-to-day working environment.

It is clear from these challenges that any public sector procurement exercise must be treated with care and carried out by informed parties who understand its complexities and who will follow a robust and totally auditable process.

Public sector procurement consultancy with eXceeding.

We know the word ‘consultancy’ can be a hard sell in the public sector. Contrary to the perception of those who see it as a waste of money, buying expensive external resource to do work you could perform in-house, public sector consultancy offers organisations the chance to deliver resource in a much more efficient way.

The great news is that procuring through some public sector frameworks means you will be able to benefit from eXceeding’s considerable public sector procurement consultancy and delivery support at zero cost.

We understand how to advise contracting authorities on all aspects of their procurement processes, consider public sector frameworks where appropriate and ensure that a compliant and auditable process is followed every time, whilst getting the desired best practice outcomes.

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eXceeding’s tender & procurement sector experience.

We have a wide range of proven experience in public sector procurement consultancy such as Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, CRFCA (part of the MoD), Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea Council, ECMWF, HASSRA, and Origin Housing. Our government procurement consultants know what is needed for you to acquire your services, supplies or works under the scrutiny of compliance, transparency and value for money.

We provide full public sector procurement support, offering any or all of a full 360° service:

• Defining a procurement strategy that is compliant and strategically important.
• Benchmarking the supplier market and assessing risks.
• Evaluating the market.
• Contract renegotiation.
• Running tenders, including drafting and managing the selection questionnaire (SQ), pre-qualification questionnaire (PQQ) and the invitation to tender (ITT) processes.
• Project management.
• Cost optimisation.
• Outsourcing.
• Supplier relationship management.

No matter what your requirements, we work with you to facilitate access to new products, services, efficiencies, innovations and markets. With all our clients, we take the time to properly analyse and define your requirements so that you can be confident that the proposed solutions and best practice guidance are tailored, and achievable, for your specific needs.

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