Recruiter uses GovMark Research for Local Government Analysis
Recruiter have used Govmark research as the basis for an analysis piece on local government. The full piece can be found here:
http://www.recruiter.co.uk/analysis/smaller-agencies-to-bear-brunt-of-cuts/1012877.article
New research by GovMark, a company that provides research to government suppliers, found that a number of converging trends are having a major impact on agencies that supply into this £1.1bn a year market for agency staff.
If you’d like to know more about the market, get in touch with GovMark, or visit the GovMark website for more information.
GovMark featured on Spend Matters
GovMark, Ticon’s market intelligence for suppliers to Government, have been featured on Peter Smith’s influential Spend Matters procurement blog.
“GovMark get their data through a pretty painstaking and painful process of digging through a whole host of publically available information – knowing where to look is key, but there’s still a lot of sheer legwork involved too.
They recently published a report on contracts for temporary staff in UK local Government. It contains some real gems – including the headline which says,
“There are 190 local authorities spending £325m p.a. without agency staff contracts”. Which means they’re probably in breach of EU regulations apart from anything else.”
You can read more here: http://spendmatters.co.uk/ticon/
If you are interested in what GovMark can do for your organisation please visit the GovMark website for more information.
GovMark
Market intelligence for suppliers to Government
GovMark is a new initiative from the team at Ticon. We’ve been researching and studying Government purchasing and procurement for the last ten years, developing a real expertise in this area.
We had been using pipeline and other contract research data for our own needs, and knew that it would be a useful commercial tool for other suppliers to Government. GovMark reports provide suppliers with comprehensive market insight into buyers, their current contracts and suppliers, contract spend and tendering opportunities.
Using GovMark means growing your market share, by tendering less and winning more. Our insight helps to develop relationships and shape buyer’s requirements in advance of a tender, identifying Government opportunities long before a contract expires. We show you, where the opportunity is, what it is worth and what the buyer’s priorities are.
If you are interested in what GovMark can do for your organisation please visit the GovMark website for more information.
Updated Research: Cheque Usage in UK Councils
Ticon recently produced a research report on the cheque usage of UK Councils. We have since completed extra research to ensure every UK Council is included in the report to give the most accurate representation of cheque usage trends within UK local authorities.
We analysed the number of cheques processed by Councils across the UK over two financial years, identifying trends and opportunities for cutting costs. Please click on the link below to read a summary of our report. If the full report is of interest please do not hesitate to contact us.
Preventing fraud in procurement
It is estimated that 90% of corporate fraud occurs through contracting or purchasing. At the highest levels of an organisation, fraud usually includes corrupt valuations, where the experience of Olympus is a perfect example. Procurement level fraud, is usually a matter of collusion, where kickbacks and rewards are arranged in exchange for providing business to a supplier, something that is alleged to have happened at Edinburgh City Council recently.
At the lowest level, purchasing fraud is committed by buyers, either because they have the ability to approve the purchase of overpriced goods, make payments to non-existent suppliers or to buy goods that they can then resell later. Buyer fraud may be lower down the authority chain, but the impact can be significant, as the London Borough of Lambeth found out in 2005, when £2.8m of payments were made by a temporary member of staff to a supplier selected to carry out works by the same staff member.
Interestingly fraud is often committed by middle managers who had failed to pay enough into their pensions over their career and who are now facing the prospect of retirement with only a small income. Given that some pensions have been significantly devalued, this phenomena may increase over the coming years.
Happily, the simplest way to reduce corporate fraud, is also good procurement practice: increase competition when awarding business. Increasing the number of viable suppliers into tenders delivers greater savings opportunities and makes it much harder to act collusively. Real competition drives price transparency which, in turn, makes buyer fraud harder to execute.
Key steps for preventing procurement fraud:
1. Enforce competitive tendering and quoting wherever possible
2. Review tender specifications to prevent buyers ‘seeding’ the specification so that favoured suppliers will win the business
3. Ensure that tender panels feature staff unconnected with the current contracting provision
4. Investigate supply chains to bring as many qualified suppliers into a tender as possible
5. Monitor spend and contract prices
6. Document meetings between suppliers and the organisation leading up to a tender
7. Enforce approvals for large or frequent payments