Cost savings across IT and WAN outsourcing
Girlguiding is the leading charity for girls and young women in the UK.
Girlguiding empowers nearly half a million girls, to be their best and face the challenges of growing up today. They have been doing that through adventure, friendship and fun for over 100 years.
Having never conducted a formal outsourced provider procurement in-house, the process felt daunting to the small IT team at Girlguiding. They were also governed by their sector (charity and membership organisation) bodies, to ensure the process was fair and transparent whilst delivering best value.
Having decided to market test their incumbent outsourced IT provider, Girlguiding approached eXceeding to see how they could help. It was decided that a full turn key solution would provide the best level of support for the project, where eXceeding owned all aspects of the tendering process.
During initial engagement it came to light that they also had a separate supplier for their WAN and therefore eXceeding proceeded to run two projects in parallel.
We identified 3 key challenges which needed to be addressed as part of the project:
Lack of experience
The internal team lacked the experience and market knowledge required to run an outsourced provider procurement
Limited internal resources
To run such an intensive procurement project.
Fair and transparent process
To adhere to governance and ensure transparency, whilst also delivering the best value for money
eXceeding ran two procurements in parallel for IT outsourcing and the provision of a WAN provider. Our procurement consultants managed all aspects of the tendering process including preparing the tender documents, selecting appropriate bidders, releasing the tenders and managing the Q&A and responses.
The new, flexible and efficient contracts, with improved SLAs, will enable Girlguiding’s IT to be fit for purpose for present and future needs.
There is now an increased focus on supplier relationship management to ensure that Girlguiding continues to achieve year-on-year cost savings, as well as the best possible service.
Girlguiding identified that resource availability would impact upon our ability to effectively deliver, at pace, two concurrent complex and critical IT procurement projects. Based upon recommendation, and following a competitive supplier review, we selected eXceeding to partner with us to define, manage and deliver the professional services necessary to meet the Girlguiding requirements. Working with eXceeding was an outstanding collaborative experience, although eXceeding assumed complete responsibility for the procurement workstreams, we were always clearly and continuously informed of progress, with the team ensuring that the strategic and tactical requirements of Girlguiding remained central to the project. We would not hesitate in using the services of eXceeding again, they delivered what they promised, on time and in a highly cost-effective manner.
HASSRA required a full OJEU aligned procurement process for one of its biggest membership benefits – cinema tickets. eXceeding ran the entire tender process through to the transition to a new supplier.
SIPS initially engaged eXceeding back in 2015 after identifying risks which could potentially challenge the availability of critical services.
eXceeding’s role was to define the procurement strategy and the process, whilst working with their IT and procurement teams to support their inhouse work streams.
