Guidance

Financial, Procurement and Civilian People Services

Published 27 July 2023

1. Our Purpose

We provide expert information, advice, and services to and on behalf of Ministry of Defence business areas. Financial, Procurement and Civilian People Services offers a broad range of essential accounting, commercial and people services that are critical for the smooth functioning of DBS and MOD.

1.1 Services we deliver

We provide a number of important services which are crucial for DBS and MOD to function. This includes delivering business as usual as well as supporting large scale Departmental change projects and initiatives, serving the whole of the MOD, customers and stakeholders

Key ones are:

Business as Usual responsibilities:

• Contracting, Purchasing and Finance Data Services, Inventory & Transactional
• DBS customer services via Incident Response Team
• Enquiry Centres providing 1st Line support for Civilian HR; Veterans and Finance & Procurement Services
• Responsible for the management or our HR, Pay and Expense systems.

Serving MOD:

• Responsible for timely and accurate payment Civilian Salary and Expenses.
• Recovering in excess of approximately £1.2 billion of receipts in respect of MOD invoices, Processing transactions on behalf of MOD branches. This includes invoicing a wide range of customers (commercial, government and private individuals) to recover monies owed for goods/services provided by MOD and processing credits to cancel or amend charges. Debt management resolving disputes, hastening for payment, supporting vulnerable customers, setting up payment plans and taking legal action. *Providing HR shared services including, resourcing, pay, apprentice management and casework to over 50,000 MOD employees and some ‘Trading Fund’ departments.
• Providing a single repository for the secure and sensitive handling of all MOD data.

Collaborating with our suppliers:

• Payments to MOD suppliers valued at more than £27 billion a year.
• Supplier & Customer on boarding and data management.

Supporting MOD customers:

• Generating debtors, and creditors in the MOD financial management system valued at approximately £102 billion.
• Processing receipts in multiple currencies from customers in the UK and across the world to pay MOD for good/services provided or to clear over-payments.
• Manage the process for identifying and supporting eligible Afghans who supported the UK mission in Afghanistan over the past 20 years to come to the UK under the Afghan Relocation and Assistance Policy scheme.
• Ensure that business and technical changes are delivered across the team in conjunction with our customers.

1.2 Our Current Challenges

Our Finance, HR and Procurement shared services are vital in helping the entire Defence community carry out its core business, which is both challenging and rewarding.

In the next three to five years, we will consolidate our three locations in the Northwest into Blackpool. This will test our ability to lead change both as individuals and as an organisation. At the same time, we will continue to modernise our service delivery by introducing more automation and digitisation, taking advantage of the benefits of the Blackpool co-location.

We face other challenges such as reducing aged debt, handling complex disputes and debt management casework, tracking down customers who have not provided the required remittance details, keeping up with frequent changes to Worldwide Banking Regulations, and ensuring timely responses to Invoice Hastening requests to release Supplier Invoices.

We are working on lots of fronts to improve the delivery of Procurement Services – our key one is the Procurement Reform Bill on which we are working with our Commercial function. This Bill would reform the way public authorities purchase goods, services and public works by simplify and modernising procurement rules and procedures.

1.3 We work closely with the following stakeholders within our role:

The wider-Defence community including our Finance, Commercial and Civilian HR Functional and MOD Top Level Budget customers as well as debtors, suppliers, Exostar and HM Treasury.