North Yorkshire Councils saves 29% on Mobile Phones
Category: Mobile Phones
Savings: £204,178 / 29.8%
North Yorkshire County Council joined forces with several smaller district councils and the North York Moors National Park to put their contract for thousands of mobile phones out to tender in a TradingPartners eAuction. In less than an hour, they cut their costs by almost 30 per cent.
The Challenge
The area covered by North Yorkshire County Council is the largest of any local authority in England, totalling almost two million acres and including Harrogate, Selby, Skipton, Ripon, Richmond, Scarborough, and Northallerton.
The county council decided to collaborate with several smaller district councils - Richmondshire, Hambleton, Selby and Craven – and the North York Moors National Park to purchase mobile phone services jointly.
More than 3,000 phones are used by staff working for the organisations including social workers, surveyors, road workers, park wardens and engineers who need to keep in touch with their colleagues and managers while working throughout the region. But the existing phone packages, which included handsets, line rentals and the airtime needed to make calls, were due to expire.
The new North Yorkshire consortium needed to find out if it could achieve better value for money while maintaining the same quality standards.
The Project
The Buying Solutions framework agreement was used to identify the best suppliers and to comply with public sector procurement regulations.
The county council had already successfully achieved a 20 per cent saving on fixed line telephones in another recent online auction run by TradingPartners, the Buying Solutions preferred supplier for managed eAuctions.
The eAuction
The eAuction was initially set to last 30 minutes, suppliers started to compete by placing increasingly lower bids, which meant the eAuction was extended. In order to ensure maximum competition, suppliers were able to see the value of the latest bid as it appeared onscreen but were not privy to competing supplier names or quantity. After almost an hour of bidding, the lowest price had been achieved and the winning supplier identified.
The Result
The successful company, agreed to provide the package for £685,000 - just over £204,000 less than the prices offered under the current Buying Solutions Framework Contract and the equivalent of a 29.8 per cent saving.
A tendering exercise which would have taken months using conventional methods had been completed in minutes. Ian Beverley, Director of Procurement, NPG, commented: “TradingPartners worked very closely with us, helping us engage with the suppliers and managing the whole project in a very professional manner. They made it a painless process and delivered an outstanding result. “We knew that the Buying Solutions framework usually offered good value for money, but 29.8 per cent was a phenomenal saving. We were absolutely delighted!”
The view was echoed by John Burrows, Assistant Director, Central Finance, at North Yorkshire County Council: “We were highly delighted with the outcome – it was a fantastic saving which will directly benefit the services we can provide. “We saw firms very interested in winning our business and willing to compte against each other to win the contract. TradingPartners did a great job for us, using their expertise to make sure it all ran smoothly.”