The Customer

As a long-standing client of Comensura, this public sector organisation has an ever-evolving range of workforce management needs. The organisation has a global reach and has been partnering with us for several years. The breadth and depth of our support has changed from our initial engagement and because of our trusted partnership approach, this client has helped shape the services we offer, becoming one of the first to adopt our Statement of Work solutions.

The Challenge

Compliance across the supply chain was a big challenge for the organisation. As a global entity, the way they procured services needed to be governed by EU practices which required robust tender and bid processes, as well as a fully audited trail of evidence.

With a range of projects often being delivered in tandem, they had various commissioning managers working on campaigns, without any clear tracking and monitoring process. The associated compliance and governance challenges was a cause for concern in terms of apparent risks and liabilities.

The client was also seeking greater autonomy around value for money and project timescales, with many projects tending to overrun in term of timescales and cost increases. Our SOW solution helped them to drive towards a smarter way of working. Better cost controls were required and a focus on measurable and objective milestones were also needed, so they reached out to Comensura to find a new solution.

The Solution

The client was an early adopter of our SOW solution, and it was our collaborative approach which helped to develop a service that met the unique requirements of all commissioning and project managers. Through our cutting edge c.net technology platform we provided the client with a technology-driven approach to managing its SOW spend.

The online platform has provided the client with rigour and control around the SOW project decision-making process. It delivers a clear authorisation and approval processes for projects aligned to both commissioning managers and suppliers. This creates full governance and compliance for all other key stakeholders.

Any change to budget constraints, timeframes or supplier scope had to be authorised by the right person or team. This provided a clear audit trail of the entire approval process. More importantly, it was easy to manage thanks to the easy-to-use C.net technology platform.

We also worked closely with the client to define what ‘good looks like’ for the SOW process. The team helped to shape supplier briefs and develop clear milestones to ensure the right information was being fed into the technology to deliver the best results.

As part of the SOW solution, we ensured the client worked with its supply chain to implement a milestone based pay system. This meant that projects were paid only once certain criteria had been met, allowing greater rigour and control around payment processes in general.

We also worked with the client to make this a scalable solution, meaning they could increase or decrease supply chain requirements as and when needed. The technology platform was also developed to act as a knowledge centre, allowing cross-sharing of information to streamline decisions and promote collaborative ways of working. Users logged on to c.net and pull up previous SOW briefs, analyse the success of previous suppliers and make data-driven decisions for any new SOW requirements.

Results

Our SOW solution provided the client with more measurement and control over spend and the ability to work smarter than ever before. As a result of our SOW solution, the organisation has reduced the number of projects that overrun in terms of cost or time to complete.

Where new project re-runs are required, the slick process has enabled quick turnaround times with suppliers being procured quickly without compromising on compliance or governance requirements.

As a result of implementing this SOW solution the client received very positive feedback from their external auditors by reducing costs, improving processes and gaining better visibility and control of spend.

Through our current SOW solution, we’ve delivered projects in a multitude of categories of supply as follows:

• Payroll Management 
• Training and Development 
• Resource Planning 
• HR and Compensation 
• Marketing Services 
• Procurement Services 
• ICT and Infrastructure Design 
• Organisational Development.

The types of projects we have been able to deliver on so far range from large scale IT projects delivering digital client centric services, HR and resource change management projects, complex high volume resource management projects and digital transformation programmes.