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Cheshire County Council

Mid Staffs NHS | Cheshire Council | Trafford Borough Council

Managed procurement for desktop equipment; installation & cabling

All of Cheshire County Council's activities – ranging from education and highways to social services, libraries and civil protection – are enabled or supported in some way by IT. The Council is the largest employer in the county, with a workforce of 23,000, all of whom need to be supported by efficient systems if they are to carry out their jobs effectively. Cheshire County Council spends almost £1 billion each year in providing more than 80% of the local authority services in the county and it naturally wants to ensure best value in the delivery of those services.

Standardised procurement: The problem the Council faced was that dealing directly with suppliers, sourcing PCs from one, printers from another and so on, was inefficient as it involved a high administrative overhead. In addition, the Council felt that best value was compromised by departments independently evaluating solutions leading to a lack of standards and sometimes buying over-specified equipment.

Under a seven-year contract which began in March 2005, a&o systems + services (a&o) provides Cheshire Country Council with a managed procurement service for desktop equipment, supported by a range of installation and cabling services.

End users now order via departmental co-ordinators, or direct from a&o, selecting from a corporately specified catalogue that includes desktop PCs, laptops, printers, software, cabling, a range of other products and disposal services. The catalogue contains those standard items that Cheshire County Council's ICT services will support, although if necessary, it is possible for users to order off-catalogue for special items.

In future the Council is hoping to use this standardised approach to support an automated business requirement profile process. This is where users would answer questions on an online form to help determine the most appropriate – and therefore most cost-effective specification of product for their needs.

In addition, a&o is helping Cheshire Country Council to extend the lifecycle of some equipment. For example, design engineers require high-specification PCs. But when these are replaced, they could possibly be re-used for less demanding tasks, such as email in the Social Services department.

Working in partnership: a&o has a lot to offer Cheshire County Council on top of providing a single source for all the products. The two organisations work in partnership to improve services and to plan and implement new developments and resolve issues.

a&o has a person permanently on-site at the Council's offices to ensure customer satisfaction and effective service delivery. Joint meetings of the contract Operations Team are held every six weeks. There is also a joint Contract Development Team that looks for opportunities to improve or expand the programme, as well as a high-level Management Review Group, comprising directors from both a&o and Cheshire County Council, which convenes each quarter to review service delivery and approve new developments. Each year the Council formally presents its planned work programme for the next 12 months and a&o responds with proposals for supporting and strengthening the initiatives, ensuring that both parties are working to common objectives and fully understand any issues, risks or constraints.

This means the contract is far from static. At any time there is the potential to insert new technology. This is essential when existing products are discontinued and need to be replaced. More importantly, though, through its vendor contacts, a&o can assess and suggest new technologies that might benefit the Council – such as the possibility of using tablet PCs and digital pens for social services work – and to advise on strategic issues. For example, a&o has proposed new software licensing schemes, and has provided advice on areas such as print strategy, adopting ITIL to achieve best practice around the service desk and so on.

Mutual trust is an important element of this relationship. This has been built by a&o working with the Council over several years on various programmes. In addition, the procurement deal is an open book contract, meaning that the Council can see the prices a&o is paying for the products and the margin it is making on them.

Benefits derived: The benefits to Cheshire County Council have been immediate and significant. In fact, in the first year, the Council saved over £100,000 – some 54% more than expected.

This has come, in part, from a major reduction in the administrative tasks. Its purchasing procedures – including the raising of purchase orders and processing invoices and payments – now involve just one supplier, with a single, consolidated invoice. That alone has resulted in notable cost savings.

As a&o maintains relationships with a wide range of vendors, it can ensure that the Council gets the best price. In fact, the company is committed to providing best value and regularly undertakes Request for Pricing exercises where it invites vendors to bid. The products always match the Council's requirements and specifications, but it isn't tied to individual vendors. a&o also supplies against agreed service levels, with penalties for any failure to meet them.

Cheshire County Council now has access to a greater range of technical skills and a great deal of expertise in assessing new and emerging technologies, which it can introduce without undertaking a full procurement exercise.

“It really has been fantastic to have all our IT requirements managed by such a competent team,” says Jeremy Taylor, Chief Executive Officer of Cheshire County Council. “The transition was seamless and we are all very happy with the service provided by a&o.”

Services featured:

Bespoke catalogue of IT equipment and services, including:

• Desktops, laptops, printers, scanners & PDA’s
• Installations
• Disposals
• Cabling services
• Plus: Consultancy on new technologies