Editorial

Effective Procurement in an Evolving COVID-19 World

Aqilla co-founder and CEO, Hugh Scantlebury, argues governmental organisations need to adapt to a changed world, and procurement needs to be bold, and re-examine the essentials

Posted 15 July 2020 by Christine Horton


Change is a constant, and right now many organisations need to adapt quickly against a national backdrop of depleted resources and likely investment (with the possible exception of anticipated NHS capital infrastructure).

Going forward, central and local governmental organisations – those engaged in citizen administration and the third sector – will need to act adroitly to adapt to a changed world. Also, it is indisputable that national initiatives such as Universal Credit need the scale of global supply support as offered by the likes of Accenture and Civica.

However, the cost of ownership of many legacy IT projects needs to be challenged. This applies to not infrastructure investment as well as capitalised contract costs. Some public bodies are facing real challenges around the affordability of multiple year contracts negotiated in previous, less contentious years. They can’t afford to keep what they have, irrespective of fit for purpose. They also often can’t afford to change.

Don’t play it safe

Procurement exercises need therefore in these times to be bold and re-examine the essentials. There should be no cases of just buying SAP or Oracle because it feels “safe”. What is safe in 2020? Safe has often not delivered benefit and just proved very expensive. Even the Cabinet Office being a good example in changing headline systems at least three times in less than 10 years. 

The likes of Amazon, with its AWS offering, have proved agility is key. Value can be redeemed in terms of headcount reduction, hours saved, processes simplified. KPMG’s mantra of dealing with the 80 percent of requirements which are standard, with the 20 percent following at a lower cost point than paying huge expense to achieve everything makes a lot of sense.

Key to future success should consider the following:

  1. The simplification of processes first, before going out to procurement.
  2. Empowering project owners.
  3. Running smaller integrated procurements. The technology exists with APIs to readily join systems and processes up.
  4. Be prepared to fail … but at low cost. Fail fast. Organisations cannot afford to waste money anymore. Organisations can learn a lot by getting things wrong as well as being proved right.
  5. Creating a culture of change and link to core service objectives which celebrate continuous benefit to as many stakeholders as possible.
  6. Hiring people who don’t need to be told what to do but are naturally problem solvers who create additional value and extend capability.
  7. Automate, automate, automate. Use AI and machine learning for as much as possible from automatic reporting (using natural language generation (NLG) for generation of explanatory notes / commentary to provide context); automatic bank integration and reconciliation and cash processing; OCR, asset management and workforce deployment. 
  8. However, as has been evidenced by the recent period, recognise the value of people, e.g. the NHS. Without people, and effective engagement with, listening to and appreciating the experience of those responsible for the delivery of frontline services, AND be prepared to adapt processes given such invaluable, qualified and informed feedback.
  9. Being ready to change, and change again, quickly. Adapt.
  10. To help achieve this everything should be Cloud based. No big on-premise or ‘in-premise’ liabilities in terms of infrastructure, software, staffing, support, processes or single points of failure. 
Aqilla co-founder and CEO, Hugh Scantlebury

Once again, we’re anticipating the arrival of the latest ‘wave’ of G-Cloud (12). Now several years into the process, what has the benefit been, and to who? Has cloud first worked? Have small to medium vendors been successful in securing a place at the table of supply? I am not so sure. The same large vendors present 10 years ago are still winning the lion’s share of framework business.

In contrast over the last ten years there have been countless procurements contracted independently of the broader framework arrangements. Pragmatic, local, cheaper. Designed to be more agile, and provide more value whilst co-existing in a broader GOV.UK IT ecosystem, most have which have proved very successful and cost a lot less.

Such an approach should, in my view, be encouraged within the Crown Commercial Service, with officers being rewarded on real outcomes, not just rhetoric.