The Challenge
South Staffordshire and Shropshire NHS Foundation Trust (SSSFT) is a community-focused organisation that provides physical and mental health services with the aim of improving the health and wellbeing of all patients and their families in the counties of Staffordshire and Shropshire. As part of the £20bn of Efficiency Savings that the NHS has been tasked with delivering, SSSFT has to achieve recurring savings of £8m. Their Director of Finance, Jayne Deaville, recognised that an enhanced procurement team with a step-change in the way it manages the Trust’s supply chain could make a significant contribution to this goal.
The Approach
Working as One-Team with the Trusts’ Finance and Procurement personnel, Procure4 undertook a detailed scoping exercise to analyse the ‘As-Is’ approach to procurement within the Trust and identify savings opportunities in key areas of non-pay spend. The process involved engaging with key stakeholders to understand the operational context for each of the categories and to build a view on which areas of capability that the in-house function needed to develop in order to achieve the programme goals. The output of the exercise was a clear plan of action to deliver cost savings in five spend categories and the creation of four workstreams to significantly enhance the capability of the in-house team, specifically in respect of: Structure Development, Training & Competency Development, Systems Review and Supplier Consolidation.
The Results
Procure4 has deployed its own Category Leaders to deliver the identified savings in the five categories with a combined savings forecast of over £500k. The team has worked closely with the in-house team to ensure knowledge transfer in terms of approach and category insight. The four Functional Review workstreams has seen the in-house procurement team further developed such that it will be capable of managing the new supply chain without support from Procure4. Jayne Deaville’s thoughts are captured below: