Public Sector

Managing budgets effectively and keeping control on costs are key responsibilities for the public sector. The ever tightening fiscal climate and continued drive to find operational efficiencies and cashable savings, means that organisations need to ensure they are fully equipped to deliver value for money from all services. These pressures need to be managed and commercial expertise is often too costly for the smaller public sector organisations to employ directly. Finding support is critical to the effective running of an organisation. The emerging shared services and procurement consortia go some way to meeting normal buying needs, but often this will not cater for the more complex services. On these occasions finding the right support at the right time can be difficult and expensive.

Excalibur has recently launched a new service which meets this challenge and can provide a cost effective and efficient solution for public sector organisations.

We can now take on part or all of an organisation's commercial function, operating seamlessly within their governance requirements ensuring that front line staff focus their efforts on core functions and service delivery to the public. At the same time they know that their commercial processes, market development and strategic support are being handled by a team of professionals who have the required skills and knowledge.

Excalibur’s services can be tailored to individual organisational needs following a review of commercial activities, any of the following elements may be included in the package:

• Management and monitoring of all procurement and contract management functions including:
  • Tenders
  • Specification writing
  • Contract management
  • Contract monitoring
  • Management reporting
  • Commercial audits
• Market testing and benchmarking activities
• Project Management
• Best Value reviews to ensure continuous improvement on selected services (the number of reviews are dependent on the size and complexity of the organisation)
• Supply chain and market development mechanisms
• Service reviews (other than best value reviews)
• Management and development of commercial policies and procedures to ensure currency of documentation
• Compliance with statutory and organisational governance requirements
• E-commerce
• A minimum of four training sessions per year
• Administration of any Government Procurement Card (GPC) or other card programmes

Excalibur delivers this service through a dedicated team of professionals supported by a state of the art commercial management tool and a network of specialist associates who can be called upon to provide support in areas requiring a particular skill. These may include technical skills in health, social care, criminal justice, transport, education IT, legal, and Corporate Social Responsibility. Our training services are provided by in-house staff supported by a delivery team made up of recognised training experts.

The service we offer is modular in style, made up of a core element together with additional elements dependent on the organisation’s specific needs. Payment is arranged through a fixed annual fee paid monthly in arrears. For example a medium sized public sector organisation commissioning the service may expect to pay less than the cost of employing a full-time commercial professional. In addition, savings and efficiencies are available from reduced administration and support functions which are undertaken as part of the Excalibur package.