3 east of England councils save £335,000 on office supplies
A Crown Commercial Service (CCS) framework has saved 3 councils 40% on their requirements when buying office supplies.
The requirement
LGSS, a public sector shared service operating in the east of England, decided to purchase office supplies through the Crown Commercial Service Office Supplies for the Wider Public Sector framework (RM3703), following the end of its previous contract.
An eAuction was chosen as the best way to maximise the potential for savings, as eAuctions can help improve the already competitive framework pricing through aggregation.
LGSS brought together the office supplies requirements of 3 local authorities: Cambridgeshire County Council, Milton Keynes Council and Northamptonshire County Council.
The solution
CCS led the eAuction on behalf of the councils. LGSS provided information on their quality requirements, which all suppliers under the framework needed to satisfy to be invited to participate in the eAuction.
CCS was then able to run the eAuction on a price-only basis, with LGSS safe in the knowledge that each bidder was capable of fulfilling the councils’ quality requirements.
The results
The eAuction achieved a saving in excess of £335,000 based on a core basket of stationery products over the 4 year contract period. This is equivalent to a 40% saving.
Ruth Grehan, Corporate Procurement Manager at LGSS, commented:
“The eAuction was a great success. The CCS eAuction team, with support from the office supplies category team, were beyond helpful. They not only ran the eAuction but advised on our options, tender documents, specification and our core basket. They also arranged training for the suppliers and ran a practice eAuction the day before the live eAuction.
“All of this saved us so much time. As we all know, working for the public sector, time is precious as well as the public purse. We would not have been able to achieve these savings with a conventional procurement process.
“I would have no questions on using the CCS eAuction team again.”
Get involved
To take part in an eAuction or find out more about the framework:
Visit the office supplies framework web page.
Call us on 0345 410 2222.
Last updated 2 August 2017 + show all updates
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Updated contact link
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First published.