Helpful tips to make your strategic supplier relationships work really well

The urge to exit a failed strategic supplier or outsourcing relationship can be so strong that clients leap to instruct their lawyers before they have fully assessed the operational (as opposed to contractual) risks of getting out of a failed contract, early. In short, they do not…

As strategic and trusted supplier partners, the ‘big four’ – PwC, Deloitte, KPMG and EY – take on a significant percentage of the audit work the market has to offer. Reportedly around 97% of all FTSE 350 companies have audit…

Strategic partnership relationships are inherently complex entities. At their outset, you will inevitably know less about one another than six to twelve months later. However, at the outset you are expected to develop a roadmap in the form of a…

A strategic partnership is only as strong as the commercial trust you share. When things go wrong it is important you consider contract termination as the ‘nuclear option’; the option of last resort when every other reasonable mechanism to improve…

What’s the cost of poor contract design and management? When it comes to our nuclear deterrent here in the UK, the answer is reportedly £1.35 billion. That is the figure the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has placed on the cost…

There are key differences in the core functions of private and public sector organisations. When you bring them together in a complex strategic supplier relationship, you will have some who will be fundamentally opposed to the partnership from an ideological…

Government support for British business has come in many forms throughout the Covid-19 crisis – always welcome and often significantly beneficial. Network Rail is one public owned entity that is doing its bit to help. It is representative of the…

Competitive Dialogue (CD) is a public sector procurement tendering procedure whereby you enter into dialogue with suppliers until you find a solution that meets the needs of your organisation. It is ideal for complex and high-risk solutions where there are…

The government has introduced a number of schemes during the Covid-19 pandemic to minimise risks that might otherwise have resulted in the economy grinding to a halt. Ongoing reports on the economic outlook of the country may look pretty bleak…

A couple of months ago, news broke of challenges in a number of Leicester-based clothing factories. Reports suggested that workers were being paid below the minimum wage, with allegations of exploitation and human trafficking and of a workforce forced to…

It’s encouraging to focus an article on a success story. The one that caught our attention is the strategic supplier relationship between the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) and social justice charity Nacro, whose role is to assist in the reform…

A consortium led by the UK government and Indian conglomerate Bharti Global has won the right to buy ailing satellite business OneWeb (subject to approval from the company’s creditors, the U.S. Bankruptcy Court and regulatory approval) for USD$1bn. The UK’s…

In June, NHS supplier Redcentric reportedly suffered a dual blow of financial and reputational loss. The reputational issues were related to the announcement that three former employees were to be prosecuted for ‘fraud, false accounting and misleading an auditor after…

For the last four months, the news media has been practically a one-focus outlet. As the health impacts of the pandemic start to wind down, news of the economic consequences it is leaving in its wake have started to filter…

The question of ‘institutional racism’ is particularly poignant at this time, and while the claims UVW has made against St George’s University of London on behalf of their members will be seen by some to be extreme, there are likely…

The effects of Covid-19 on the NHS and its staff are likely to be felt long into the future. The current crisis has seen an unprecedented demand for acute care, particularly intensive care units, which has led to significant efforts…

Two of the UK’s largest public sector outsourcing businesses have agreed to combine their support services divisions as Mitie Group purchases Interserve’s facilities management arm. Both organisations are heavily involved in public sector work, with Mitie currently managing a number…

The coronavirus pandemic has created a uniquely challenging environment for organisations, both public and private, to contend with. Forecasts of potential visions of what is to come, will inevitably contain a level of calculated guesses and considered estimations. However, one…

A dispute that erupted in the first half of last year is once again in the news media. Stagecoach, one of a number of public transport providers in the UK and US, took the Department for Transport (DfT) to court…

Covid-19 has helped focus the minds of leadership teams in terms of the degree of value and benefits a number of organisations are achieving from their strategic supplier relationships. Over the last two to three months, the reliance on key…

As we enter the tenth week of ‘Lockdown’ here in the UK, we have seen the government going to significant lengths to protect businesses and jobs. It has invested funds and resources at unprecedented levels on schemes, loans, packages and…

The coronavirus crisis has impacted clients and strategic suppliers across the globe with supply chains suffering, in often unpredictable ways, from the domino effect of challenges from any one or more organisations rippling out to affect others. In response this…

Confidence is a vital element in any major IT project relationship, confidence in your supplier’s ability to deliver on your expectations – as the length, cost and disruption involved in any such project can be significant, alongside the risks associated…

We’ve been contacted by many clients concerned about the financial stability of their key strategic suppliers. With the ongoing COVID-19 crisis impacting businesses on a truly global scale, it is an unfortunate fact that some may not survive the commercial…

Over the last few years a number of infrastructure and construction solutions organisations have reportedly been experiencing financial challenges, well before the recent pandemic took hold. In recent news, infrastructure giant Costain Construction has also announced a financial rights issue.…

In January 2017, multi-billion-dollar Fortune 500 business AECOM announced its tie-up with IBM. A $2.7 billion IT outsourcing deal to develop a ‘smart water’ solution to drive more efficient water and waste management. It was an ambitious initiative by two…

In these extraordinary times, many of our organisations are struggling: Struggling with losing personnel as increasing numbers of staff are on sick leave or self-isolating as someone they are close to is ill with what’s suspected to be COVID-19. Struggling…

Environmental concerns have been high on the political agenda for a number of years, so when Britain’s number one energy-from-waste business, Viridor Waste Management – a subsidiary of the FTSE 250 environmental utility infrastructure company Pennon Group PLC – is…

We are living through unprecedented times. Britain is in ‘lockdown’; all but ‘those who cannot work from home’ are being asked to stay at home and the government is paying companies to encourage staff and non-key workers onto furlough leave…

The London Stock Market is in challenged circumstances due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) being declared a pandemic. Even before this, Capita’s share value had declined significantly, only to fall even further (in amongst the rest of the world’s stock markets)…

Approximately 10 years ago, the Home Office gave the green light to a programme of modernisation within the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) to improve efficiencies and reduce costs. This programme was initiated a couple of years later. Eight years…

Cases of coronavirus, or COVID-19, are surging past 115,000 across the globe with over 4,000 whose lives have been claimed. Fortunately, c.65,000 people have recovered. The World Health Organization (WHO) is designating the chances of the coronavirus becoming a global…

The bedrock of Britain’s nuclear defence programme is Trident’s Continuous At-Sea Deterrence (CASD). The principle is that at all times, there will be at least one nuclear submarine at sea on patrol. However, a recent National Audit Office (NAO) report…

When you recognise that your outsourced/major projects relationship is not performing to expectations, do you go on the charm offensive, crack the whip to bring them back in line, or do you start considering alternative options? Early termination of complex…

How much do you know about what’s really going on with your strategic supplier relationship? Do you trust your supplier implicitly when they report on progress against your business outcomes, send through requests for payments and inform you of costs?…

Twelve months ago, we published an article titled Post Office Horizon IT System; Legal fees of £3m and 2-years of legal action; 3 key lessons learned. It looked into the claims by subpostmasters that the Post Office’s £1bn Horizon IT…

I was quite excited about the ‘street talk’ regarding the about-to-be-released IACCM Contracting Principles framework. The level of expertise on the IACCM Steering Committee and Advisory Board appears unparalleled. So, I thought, at last, an industry body has taken the…

A recent article in Computing highlighted the stark reality of just how much we continue to rely on technology. It was reported that a failure in the Electronic Patient Records – EPR System at King’s College Hospital meant that patients…

When you think of accidents and the space programme, most people of a certain age will remember the Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster of ’86, when the craft disintegrated just 73 seconds into the launch, due to an O-ring failure. The…

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) is the UK government department responsible for implementation of government defence policy and for the British Armed Forces. The MoD manages the day to day running of the armed forces, contingency planning and defence procurement.…