Making sure you’re getting best value for the money that goes out of your organisation is more important than ever. Peter Roberts of ProVantage Procurement explains how Crown Commercial Services can help your charity when buying goods and services.
Smaller charities alone don’t have the levels of spend that larger ones do. This makes it harder for them to negotiate on the costs for the goods and services that are necessary to keep their organisation operating.
The result? Thousands and thousands of smaller, more expensive contracts are placed across the third sector for the same common items every year. This means not just lost opportunities in leverage, but the same drains on internal resources each time.
Who are the Crown Commercial Service?
To address this, in 1991 the Government created a Buying Agency which is now known as the Crown Commercial Service (CCS) to provide free professional procurement services to the third sector.
The Crown Commercial Service Frameworks help the UK’s third sector save money when buying common goods and services and is the biggest public procurement organisation in the UK.
CCS commercial agreements use full competition among suppliers to increase quality and value and in 2021/22 they helped users achieve commercial benefits totalling over £2.8 billion by using their agreements.
There are tens of thousands of common goods and services available through these frameworks, covering anything from buildings, all areas of IT, HR, waste, energy, legal services, food, staff... far too many to list!
These are free for you to use and frameworks differ from contracts as they do not usually include a legally binding commitment on your part to receive the goods or services and make payment. This means you can review what’s on offer and the costs, then dip in and out of the agreement as you wish.
Buying through CCS with their rigorous procurement regulations already applied means that as well as the bottom-line savings, you don’t need to invest the significant time and resources in the tendering process yourself.
Why use CCS?
- Customers get competitive prices because suppliers can sell large volumes of their products and services to UK public and third sector organisations as though they were supplying a single customer
- No commitments – just use as and when you have the requirement
- Use to benchmark all of your existing costs
- CCS vet and reviews suppliers regularly and diligently. This saves you the time in sourcing suppliers and carrying out your own due diligence
- Framework suppliers range from a large number of suppliers from multinational companies to small and medium sized business (SMEs)
- Frameworks include performance management criteria, obliging suppliers to improve value and service over time which CCS employees manage
- Greatly reduced administration for you
- Free to use for public sector and third sector organisations!
Why is making savings so key?
The impact on any organisation of making savings on the day-to-day running costs is often overlooked. Currently the charities sector is feeling the impact of reduced income stream, falling donations and increasing operational costs.
You can see from the example below that saving 5% on your outgoings has the same effect on what’s left on the balance sheet as does a 20% increase in income. And is almost certainly easier!
Using Frameworks is free and the stringent processes already applied by the government means you don’t need to invest your charity’s money in time or expertise to run your own sourcing and tenders – just take up the resulting Agreements if they are of interest
Further information
Watch CCS's video on Procurement Essentials below:
CCS is based in Liverpool with their buyers who personally run all of the individual Frameworks based nationally. They are always available to talk to you about your specific requirements. Email: info@crowncommercial.gov.uk or telephone: 0345 410 2222.
Alternatively, as a Corporate Member of the CFG, I’ve used these Frameworks extensively as a customer over the past 30 years and would be happy to walk you through process. Please feel free to contact me. You can email me or telephone: 0800 566 8726 or 07827 014 303. Learn more on the Provantage Procurement website or watch the video below:
CFG - Savings Impact.mp4 from Peter Roberts on Vimeo.