Desktop Computers for the NHS
Category: Desktop Computers
Savings: £1.7 million
The Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire NHS Supply Confederation needed thousands of new desktop computers. Using a TradingPartners eAuction they were able to cut the cost by more than 40 per cent.
Computers are vital pieces of equipment in the modern health service, dealing with huge amounts of information linking hospitals, doctors and patients. However they are a major investment, so the NHS consortium made a strategic decision to use an eAuction to source the required new desktop PCs.
The Challenge
The review by procurement professionals at the Confederation found that at least 4,700 new computers would have to be bought at eight Trusts. Hundreds more were likely to be required by other Trusts in the region. The total cost, at current paid prices would have amounted to over £4 million. Technical requirements were drawn up and the Confederation started talks with seven suppliers selected from the Office of Government Commerce (OGC) framework agreement.
The Strategy
TradingPartners proposed and developed a tailored structure for the event. All seven suppliers agreed to take part and the event took place in just over two hours. Altogether 313 bids were received. “We spent months getting the information we needed together, liaising with Trusts and talking to suppliers with the help of TradingPartners. It was crucial to ensure the requirements were clear and that all stakeholders had confidence in the process" said Rachel Alwin, Project Buyer at the Confederation.
The Results
When the successful bids were accepted, it meant that prices were 43 per cent less than those paid at the start of the project - a saving of more than £1.7 million. About three-quarters of this, the Confederation says, was directly attributable to the eAuction. Rachel Alwin, Project Buyer at the Confederation, says: “It was totally successful and we’ve been able to achieve some fantastic savings. This has shown that if you’re clear about what you want and use an eAuction in the right environment, it can run very smoothly and produce real results. “There were a lot of questions at first when we decided to go for an eAuction because many people weren’t familiar with it. We explained that it’s just a transparent negotiating tool and would form part of the full procurement process.
“The eAuction exercise not only helped save a huge amount of money, but also gave Trusts information about what they were buying and how much it was costing”, Rachel says. This ‘visibility’ was an extremely useful by-product of the eAuction project. Previously, all the Trusts in the region dealt with suppliers individually. By combining the spending power of the NHS Trusts in the Confederation’s region and using the most upto-date eAuction techniques with TradingPartners, the best available deal in the marketplace was achieved.
The results were impressive: the Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire NHS Supply Confederation cut the cost of new computers for the Trusts in the three counties in East Anglia, and reviewed the use of PCs in the region in late 2004.