Durham Constabulary and Northumbria Police have adopted price policing tool (IT buying tool) Mercato ITelligence in a joint landmark move to reduce IT procurement costs as part of an overall efficiency drive.
The new approach is expected to save time and money, as well as streamline current processes.
IT represents one of the largest areas of indirect procurement spend and as a volatile marketplace where price and stock can fluctuate, it tests buyers trying to achieve sustained best value on purchases.
Mercato ITelligence informs users in real-time what margin their supplier is offering, so empowering buyers to quickly negotiate better value deals and benchmark against existing agreements. Buyers simply input their preferred supplier product lists or spot checks online which are compared to trade price and stock of 500,000 product lines within the UK IT supply chain.
With management reports and forecasting facilities, it regularly saves 3 – 24% on IT budgets and cuts time traditionally spent manually carrying out supplier comparisons – credentials that have seen ITelligence accredited for ‘procurement excellence’ by the Chartered Institute of Purchase & Supply (CIPS).
Durham Constabulary alone has a huge demand for purchase of ICT hardware, software, peripherals and consumables, which falls within a seven figure IT budget. Specifying, sourcing and buying this amount of products at best value consumes considerable time across a small team from IT and procurement.
Durham Constabulary and Northumbria Police already employ CIPS best practice approaches to buying under government framework agreements and EU Procurement Directives. However, the volatile IT market and supply chain make gathering suppliers information very difficult when having to make informed buying decisions.
Both forces procurement and IT teams worked collaboratively to assess and engage ITelligence.
Marie Dale MCIPS, Contracts Manager at Durham Constabulary, said: “For the first time, we will have knowledge of our supplier’s actual cost prices.
“This will provide negotiation from a position of strength and help us quickly save money on buying IT whilst promoting an open and collaborative supplier relationship. On that basis we expect to validate best practice best value on every purchase and ROI within weeks.
“Mercato ITelligence will also enable us to track and control spending long term as well as map our purchasing patterns to market movements for sustained value. The tool’s automated ‘alerts’ indicate when price or stock rise or fall.”
Mercato is attending APA-ACPO National Policing Conference & International Policing Exhibition on 30 June – 1 July at Manchester Central to showcase ITelligence on stand C31 to other Police Forces.