City of London signs £12.5m procurement service deal

The five year deal will see technology firm Accenture deliver a new central City of London procurement service, which will be created to undertake all procurement and procure-to-pay functions. Accenture will initially focus on delivering strategic sourcing, savings from across the authority's base of suppliers and helping to transform its management and procurement operations. The service will be delivered by a joint team from the City of London and Accenture. Chris Bilsland, financial director at the City of London, told GGC that the deal has an interesting structure as it is an "in-sourcing arrangement", which is bringing in skills and expertise from Accenture. He said that now was a good time to be making savings, and estimated that more than £30m will be saved over five years through the contract. Bisland explained that a large part of the deal centres around the authority eventually being self sufficient. "After the contract ends, the main thing is for us to be able to run the service ourselves and have a world class procurement service in place," he said. Central management will also be central to the programme, with Accenture providing training for both the authority staff that will be involved with the transformation as well as those who will take over the ongoing management of the centralised procurement service after the deal ends. An eMarketplace will also be implemented as well as a buyer portal to assist departments in requisitioning and using the new service. Bisland added that the progress of the service will be closely monitored on a regular basis to ensure that targets are met. "If Accenture delivers all of the savings and meets all of the targets, then our fee to them at the end of the five years will be somewhere in the region of £12.5m," said Bisland. This article is published by Guardian Professional. For updates on public sector IT, join the Government Computing Network here.