Lincolnshire County Council: Procurement & Contract Management: This important area manages complex procurement and contracts for the council. Modernisation and improvements were required to maintain quality, strengthen governance and improve engagement.

Lincolnshire County Council was operating multiple systems and processes none of which were fully integrated. They experienced limited integration between procurement, supplier management and contract management activities. This challenged the quality and efficiency of this area, creating the need for:

• Stronger supplier engagement, particularly with SMEs and local businesses
• A more intuitive, user-friendly supplier journey
• An improved, more responsive system support for both buyers and suppliers
• A solution for limited visibility and control across contract lifecycle management.

Internal change management had created pressures that constrained capacity. This created a strategic opportunity to align systems and processes with upcoming procurement law changes that would avoid duplicating training and process redesign.

Lincolnshire County Council wanted to replace existing Transport DPS and eAuction solution. They also needed to replace their corporate eProcurement system and introduce a fully integrated contract management system.

Given the council’s priorities, we proposed the use of Panacea – Sourcing module as a fully integrated procurement and contract management platform. And its capability of consolidating sourcing, DPS, eAuction and contract management into a single solution.

The solution provided:

• A simplified, SME-friendly supplier registration and engagement journey
• A clear and intuitive public-facing portal to encourage wider supplier participation
• Integrated workflows covering sourcing, evaluation, award and management configurable and aligned to council policies
• The ability to upload and manage contracts independent of full sourcing exercises
• Granular permissions to ensure governance without over exposing functionality
• Contract oversight functionality with dashboards that include visual risk indicators and form builder capability to gather structured performance and contract data.

Lincolnshire County Council experienced significant improvements that exceeded their goals and requirements.

• After awarding us the contract, the complex transformation programme was seamlessly implemented achieving all agreed objectives and milestones.
• Procurement and contract management were successfully consolidated into a single integrated system.
• There was marked improvement in supplier engagement and usability, particularly with SMEs.
• Duplicate data entry across systems was eliminated, and governance was strengthened as our system allowed them to configure workflows and granular permissions.

They gained enhanced visibility of contracts, risk and performance through dashboards. Overall, we provided a more responsive and collaborative system support giving them the confidence to get the most out of the software. The council particularly valued the focus on supplier experience and the ease of use through our collaborative, partnership-led implementation approach. The flexibility to configure workflows to match their policies and the integrated contract management capability.