At a Glance…
Peopletoo, in partnership with Human Engine, were commissioned in July 2019 by the Royal Borough of Kingston Upon Thames (RBK) Council to undertake a commercial review of all third party spend with the aim of making significant cost reductions and developing a programme of support to improve commissioning processes and approach to contract management.
The Challenge
At RBK Council, the commissioning function was broadly undertaken by the centralised Contracts Services who, because of increasing financial pressures, were facing a significant requirement to deliver financial savings of £1.4m from third party spend. However, whilst the savings target sat centrally, it was recognised that no savings could be delivered without the agreement of individual services who performed the operational day-to-day management of the contracts. Potential opportunities would also be difficult to quantify before a review had taken place.
Consequently, RBK and Peopletoo developed an innovative approach to funding and approach to the project, whereby a broad ‘Discovery’ period would be core funded for Peopletoo to perform high level analysis, before moving to a detailed ROI model, the delivery and implementation of specific savings opportunities. Likewise, services were then given the opportunity to fund additional Peopletoo support to assist with capacity to deliver with redesign. As such, Peopletoo reviewed existing contracts to identify savings opportunities, either through better management or alterations to the contract, before supporting implementation.
Our Approach & Delivery
Peopletoo supported the Council across several services and initiatives, including cost reductions through:
Outcomes Achieved
The target was to achieve cost reductions of £1.4m, however annual efficiencies of over £2.4m were identified and managed through the programme with substantial further areas of opportunity identified as well as one off supplier rebates from existing contracts.
In addition to the above, we also identified further opportunities that would require service operating model re-design or asset rationalisation such as in FM and Energy. Variety of training and culture change were sessions undertaken to pass on key skills and learning to improve future management of contracts.
