The Customer

The customer is a unitary local authority in England, covering a wealth of districts. They are a substantive employer with a large and complex organisational structure. Its directors and senior leaders are responsible for delivering over 450 services to 380,000 residents, managing over 4,500 employees and a budget of over £331m. It had previously relied on Comensura to supply contingent labour before investing in a Statement of Work (SOW) solution.

The Challenge

It is no secret that public sector organisations are facing increased scrutiny around the engagement of external resources. This particular authority needed a SOW solution that could adapt across a range of disparate departments, categories and projects throughout the organisation. It also had to provide full transparency and visibility of spend – as well as full support to both commissioning and project managers. The council’s previous SOW provider was essentially offering a ‘self-service’ system and the relationship wasn’t supportive. Something needed to change.

The Solution

"Through Comensura’s VMS platform, c.net, we are now delivering a number of SOW projects across the local authority, enabling the customer to procure the resource it needs in a variety of different areas while retaining full visibility and control."

As early adopters of SOW in c.net, the authority was able to test the platform, receive training and provide invaluable feedback to help shape the solution.

Outputs, timelines and costs are all clearly defined, approved, updated and tracked within the system. Users can immediately see exactly where they are with any given project: no more chasing individual project owners or managers. If team leaders need to know how much time or budget is left to run, it’s all right there in the system.

The platform also becomes more powerful the more it is used: as a user populates it with information about their statement of work projects and suppliers, it provides deeper insight into spending trends, service categories and engagement patterns – something which this local authority has benefited from.

As a spokesperson for the authority, stated, “It’s given us much more assurance, particularly around IR35. Having one arrangement for temporary staff and SOW allows us to have that assurance. If somebody tries to misclassify a job role or project, c.net and Comensura will stop them going through that wrong door.

It also gives us full visibility, so if we pick up somebody else’s project (if somebody leaves or goes off sick, for example), we can go on c.net and see exactly where that project is. It gives us transparency, which is vital for public sector organisations, which may be under scrutiny for their use of public sector resources”.