An organisation’s ability to up-skill employees with commercial skills and knowledge is key to delivering successful contract management.

We offer our clients a wide range of highly acclaimed skills programmes covering subjects from specification writing and contract management to buying and managing consultants.

All our programmes regularly achieve well over 95% client satisfaction ratings of excellent or very good.

“A very interesting and informative course, easy to understand, excellent presentation. Well worth attending.”
Leslie Howe, Stevenage Council

The Challenge is a short, in-depth review, that looks at a wide range of success factors or ‘Value Codes’ (VCs) which indicate how prepared your organisation is to manage its important contracts and their associated relationships effectively and consistently. It uses a variety of tools and approaches to collect supporting information.

Using our web-based Diagnostic, you assess how you are currently performing and what your future aspirations are for each VC based upon different stages of ‘what good looks like’. You do the assessment, our role is to provide you with the know-how and tools to help you to interpret it and then define and achieve your aspirations.

“The challenge was thought provoking and thorough from the start. It gave our leadership team new insights into where and how we needed to improve our approach to contract management and find new sources of value in the outcomes that we achieve.”
Alison Griffin, Chief Executive
Southend on Sea Borough Council

Based on the highly successful LGA Diagnostic evaluating the NPS across England and Wales, our Single Authority NPS Diagnostic service gives you the opportunity to assess the impact of the NPS across your own Council, analysing results by subject, department and role inspiring ownership and commitment to improvement.

Identify current levels of achievement based on a defined range of outcomes for the 59 NPS Value Codes. Spot shortfalls and identify areas of good practice while gaining positive engagement and ownership of NPS 2018 across all service areas and levels of responsibility.

Understanding your procurement spend and how to deliver value from knowledge. Who you are buying from, what you are buying, when and why, forms the basis for better procurement planning, market shaping and targeted savings delivery.

We put all this data into an easily understandable format and strengthen it, when required, with a full ProClass classification service and contract analysis. Ready for you to produce evidence based resource plans and business cases.

”This work has opened the door to management reporting on our commissioning and procurement activities on a level we never dreamed possible.”
Alec Pegram (Operations Director)
Aster Group

How well is your organisation performing at implementing Responsible Procurement? Do you have a common understanding of its scope, what you want to achieve, what is expected of you, and what is in your sphere of influence?. Are you struggling to meet top down, unachievable targets, constrained by silo working and unfocussed resources?

The Responsible Procurement Diagnostic is a web-based service which asks respondents across an organisation about the ‘things that matter’ or critical success factors when it comes to implementing responsible procurement.

Doing this before making public commitments to meeting targets or fulfilling a specific goal enables you to:

• increase confidence in your ability to make and deliver sustainability commitments
• safeguard your reputation for achieving outcomes
• allow coherence and consistency with communications and messaging
• improve resource planning and priority setting
• allow you to track your year-on-year progress and benchmark against other councils
• generate evidence-based reports
• avoid responsible procurement being seen as a ‘box ticking’ or public relations exercise

It is simple, proven, very cost effective and puts you in charge of making a difference.

This programme will enable participants to develop legally compliant specifications which deliver improved outcomes and minimise risk.

Specifying your requirements for goods, works and services correctly has an immense impact on who bids for the opportunity, the outcomes you achieve and longer term risks you may encounter.
There are also other considerations such as improving the social, economic and environmental well-being of local communities, stimulating markets and encouraging local businesses to bid for work.

This interactive, workshop based programme is designed to brief you on these issues and provide guidance and ideas for improving specification writing and development. Included is a specification surgery where we will start to build a specification for a live requirement.

High-value, complex and strategic contracts invariably need oversight from elected Members at some stage in the commissioning process. This can be during the planning and development stage through to sanctioning a contract award. It may even involve approving actions for dealing with an under performing contractor or cost overrun. This can prove challenging given that no two situations are the same, and the scale and complexity can prove daunting for officers and Members alike.

Contract & Relationship Management for elected Members and senior officers is a two hour briefing style session delivered by contract management and public procurement expert Ken Cole.

Contract & Relationship Management (C&RM) remains a major challenge for the UK public sector. Since the end of the pandemic, councils are having to deal with high inflation, supply chain disruption and recruitment problems set against a background of reduced budgets.

All C&RM transformation projects require one thing before they can start – a comprehensive, up-to-date and easily accessible contracts register.

The CRS is a cost effective, proven, easy to use solution to gaining contract visibility and access for you to start your journey.