Information on European Union Procurement Processes and Legislation can be found at Eur-Lex the portal to European Union Law and at the website of the Official Journal of the European Union. The Tenders Electronic Daily (TED) is the internet version of the Supplement to the Official Journal and gives details of all current tenders.
HEFCE- Value for Money Initiative: Small Scale Studies - Procurement Benchmarking
New Benchmark for UK Purchasing Managers - Oracle Corporation in conjunction with The University of the West of England, and in association with the Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply (CIPS) and KPMG Consulting has launched I-SAVE, Independent Savings Analysis Verification and Evaluation of business procurement processes. Click here for free I-SAVE diagnostic toolkit.
Article: UK plc losing billions by bad IT procurement - KPMG News 27 September 2001.
UK plc is losing huge sums of money by failing to manage IT hardware and software, according to a KPMG study published today.
Recent estimates from the US suggest that between 10% and 40% of overall IT costs can be saved by effective procurement and management of hardware and software.
KPMG's experience in the UK, supported by research it commissioned, shows that this issue is not being addressed by UK plc and points to similar savings being available to both the private and public sectors.
KPMG's survey of directors and senior managers across UK business found that almost half have absolutely no idea how much their annual IT budget is. 80% do not know what (if any ) cost savings they are making from management of IT assets. With an annual IT spend of £43bn by UK plc and using the US figures, potential wastage could be as much as £17bn - half what the Government takes in Corporation Tax.
Reasons identified by KPMG for this waste include
"Renegade" purchasing outside the authorised IT budget
Lack of any managerial accountability for the area
Bureaucratic and complex procurement processes
Failure to consider the question at Board level
The survey did show, however, that a small number of aware firms (3%) are achieving substantial savings through good practice.
Paul Diamond , Director of Information Risk Management at KPMG commented "Organisations wishing to gain a degree of control over their IT budgets can do a number of things immediately. First make a list of all the hardware and software in the organisation - is it all really necessary and is it all licensed? Secondly appoint a senior manager who will have authority over all IT asset management and licensing matters, be accountable directly to the Board and be rewarded in terms of cost savings achieved. Thirdly appoint one or two trusted suppliers and insist that all IT purchasing goes through them. As well as bulk-buying savings, they will be able to help in the key areas of preventing over-purchasing and sorting out correct software licenses. Lastly have mechanisms in place to pro-actively manage this area, including those assets which are bought outside of the 'trusted suppliers' route."
Please click here to download the full executive summary in pdf format. (Size: 163k)
All sites were current as at 2 October 2003.
