By N.Burrell, Marketing - Research and Analytics case study
CIPFA’s Procurement Benchmarking Club reports have assisted Warwickshire County Council in discovering the true cost of procurement service provision, furnished the team with comparative data and improved staff retention following a remuneration review. 
"To assure myself that the council’s procurement service was providing value for money, I needed to know how it compared with other public sector procurement services, so in 2014 I set about creating my own benchmarking club. It worked well, delivering excellent data but it had its limitations, so I approached CIPFA to discuss a potential collaboration."
Paul White, Head of Procurement, Warwickshire County Council
The collaboration
As part of completing CIPFA’s 2016 Procurement Benchmarking Club exercise, participants were invited to provide feedback on the exercise. It was at this point that a genuine partnership approach was adopted and the development of a collaborative and consolidated procurement benchmarking club was established that really hit the spot for Warwickshire County Council in terms of proportionality, relevance and usability.
CIPFA’s team of data analysts welcomed the specialist procurement input that Warwickshire was able to contribute to the benchmarking club and Warwickshire County Council certainly welcomed CIPFA’s expertise that helped bring data to life.
Why CIPFA?
Paul White explained, “While it was great that participation in the Warwickshire County Council run benchmarking Club was growing, this brought additional challenges in relation to Club management, data analysis and increasing demand from club members for improved data manipulation capability.
The obvious solution was to join forces with another organisation that had a track record in managing procurement benchmarking clubs – CIPFA. I therefore approached CIPFA to discuss the possibility of pooling efforts to produce a consolidated benchmarking exercise, that utilised the extensive procurement knowledge of Warwickshire with the data analytics expertise of CIPFA.
It was my intention to work towards creating a consolidated procurement benchmarking exercise that was relevant, fit for purpose and provided benchmarking club participants with an interactive tool that enabled users to manipulate data.”
"Working in conjunction with Warwickshire County Council through a programme of collaboration and teamwork, CIPFA’s Research and Analytics team provide valuable and insightful information about all aspects of procurement services to our club members."
Jon Kefford, Research and Analytics Corporate Services Benchmarking Lead, CIPFA
Data manipulation capability and challenges
Paul White further commented: “While it was great that participation in the Warwickshire County Council-run benchmarking club was growing, this brought additional challenges in relation to Club management, data analysis and increasing demand from club members for improved data manipulation capability.
The obvious solution was to join forces with another organisation that had a track record in managing procurement benchmarking clubs – CIPFA. I therefore approached CIPFA to discuss the possibility of pooling efforts to produce a consolidated benchmarking exercise, that utilised the extensive procurement knowledge of Warwickshire with the data analytics expertise of CIPFA.
It was my intention to work towards creating a consolidated procurement benchmarking exercise that was relevant, fit for purpose and provided benchmarking club participants with an interactive tool that enabled users to manipulate data.”
Paul White outlined his teams business challenges
“In order to ensure our procurement service was providing value for money, I needed to be able to measure, pinpoint and address the following challenges using the combined and consolidated exercise outputs.
- recruitment and retention through comparison of pay rates
- how investment in staff training compared with others
- how effective the procurement service income generation strategy was
- identify the central procurement team’s ROI
- how the authority’s procurement collaboration programme compared to others
- how client satisfaction compares to others."
From benchmarking information to policy changes
“There is a recognised shortage of good quality procurement professionals in the public sector currently, which has led to some neighbouring councils ‘poaching’ staff. With the difficulties that local authorities face in recruiting staff, being able to retain existing staff had become a priority. The salary data available via the benchmarking exercise highlighted that:
- existing staff have significant experience
- existing staff are well qualified
- existing staff are underpaid in relation to comparator roles, experience and qualification levels elsewhere.
After identifying a real retention risk, procurement benchmarking data has subsequently been used to support a review of staff remuneration at all levels. This had led to more realistic salaries being paid which increases the likelihood of retaining the staff that we have.”
Discover more
To discuss how CIPFA can help you with your benchmarking solutions - from questionnaires to report findings, or from advice to consultancy – contact our Analytics team:
T: +44 (0)20 7543 5600
W: www.cipfa.org/benchmarking
E: benchmarking@cipfa.org
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