About

Implementing Category Management

In 2011 the City of Cardiff Council took the decision to strengthen the capability and capacity of its corporate procurement resources through the creation of a new Commissioning and Procurement Service.  Our people developed, and successfully implemented, a category management approach across all of the Council’s third-party spend, including traditionally hard to reach areas such as social care.  The approach delivered in excess of £40m of cost reduction savings over the past six years and continues to deliver cost reductions and improvement in procurement performance across the Council.  Our people have a proven track record of leading cross-functional teams to create innovative procurement solutions that deliver savings and/or service improvements across all spend categories.

In depth Category Knowledge

Our people have a detailed knowledge of implementing category management in a large public sector organisation and extensive knowledge across all spend categories including:

• Adult and Children’s Social Care
• Construction, Building Maintenance, Highways, Waste and Parks
• Professional services, Transport, Facilities Management and ICT

Our people have a proven record of accomplishment of using innovative category management, strategic procurement tools and e-procurement technology to deliver results for clients.  Our people have supported the delivery of over £40million of savings over the past 6 years in Cardiff Council alone.  Our people are now developing a reputation for successfully working with other public sector bodies to support their implementation of category management and the delivery of savings.

Award Winning Team

Our people have won a number of awards, and been shortlisted for many more, over the last 3 years:

• PROACTIS – won the Best Public Sector Procurement Project 2014.
• Welsh National Procurement Awards 2015 – our people won the “Innovation through Procurement Award” and were also shortlisted for three other awards.
• SOPO UK Awards 2015 – our people won two awards “Outstanding Savings Delivery” and “Procurement Team of the Year”.
• GO – UK Procurement Awards 2016 – our people were Highly Commended in the public sector “Procurement Team of the Year” category and also shortlisted in the public sector “Innovation of the Year” category in the UK’s premier awards.
• GO – Wales Procurement Awards 2016 – our people won the “Innovation of the Year” category and were Highly Commended in the Collaboration category.
• GO – UK Procurement Awards 2017 – our people have been shortlisted in the “Innovation of the Year” category with the winners announced on 21^st March 2017.
• Public Finance Innovation Award 2017 – our people have been shortlisted in the Finance Team of the Year and Alternative Service Delivery Model of the Year categories. The winners will be announced on 20^th April 2017
• World Procurement Awards 2017 – our People have been shortlisted in Innovation Category at the 11th World Procurement Awards in London on 17th May.  This year saw a record number of entries from “some of the most influential companies across 36 countries”.

Delivering Results

Over the past six years, the Council’s Commissioning & Procurement Service has supported the delivery of cumulative savings in excess of £40 million, significantly improved governance and risk management arrangements, and helped the Council deliver against its policy aspirations through use of Community Benefits and innovative supply chain solutions. In addition, through the introduction of category management the service has:

• Increased spend under management from less than 50% to more than 90%
• Reduced maverick spend to under 1%
• Improved the efficiency of the ordering and payments process by removing in excess of 100,000 paper invoices.

The success of our category management approach is due to a number of factors including the:

• Use of detailed analysis and hard data to determine program priorities and targets
• Creation of a branded transformation program built around category management
• Restructuring procurement around categories
• Developing capability in category management
• Installing strong project / program management
• Driving change through cross functional working
• Embedding strong governance and reporting arrangements
• Building ownership by the business for program outcomes
• Securing senior management buy-in

TRANSFORMING A HIGHLY COMPLEX EVALUATION MODEL AND ACHIEVING OVER £3MILLION WORTH OF SAVINGS 

Christine May – Interim Director of Infrastructure Management and Operations commented – “the support from the team at Atebion Solutions was invaluable in imparting their knowledge and experience in supporting the Competitive dialogue sessions with bidders through the development of the theme based quality evaluation model within a robust timeframe. Ultimately, a credible strategic partner committed to delivering sustainable benefits has been successfully awarded the contract”. 

THE IDENTIFICATION OF A SOLUTION TO ADDRESS THE GROWING DEMAND FOR RESIDENTIAL AND NURSING CARE FOR OLDER PEOPLE IN CAMBRIDGESHIRE 

Shauna Torrance – Head of Commissioning for Adult Social Care – “Atebion Solutions have been instrumental in supporting us to drive forward this piece of work. The team have brought with them specialist expertise and knowledge of commissioning and procurement, with real added value coming from their hands on approach to partnership working and flexibility in adapting to changing requirements”