Building upon an initial platform of success Balancing expenditures so that a company still has enough purchasing power to continue driving development and keep serving its customers or members well without overspending on unneeded or redundant products is essential for any entity, but especially so within the government.
An effective, focused budget is essential to keep providing critical services while limiting the financial impact upon taxpayers. To this end, the United Kingdom’s Department for Education created the Schools Commercial team and tasked it to work with schools to deliver £1 billion of savings through more cost- effective procurement practices.
The Department for Education’s Schools Commercial team wanted to better understand the substantial amount of data that it had to guide decision making in fulfilling its mission of delivering £1 billion in savings for schools. Solution: The Schools Commercial team collaborated with the better demonstrate how the data it generated could be used and communicate its value to ministers.
In doing so, this team generated an extraordinary amount of data through the Schools Buying Hub, a pilot project to provide schools with experts that they could call when they needed advice or help negotiating deals. All of this information could be useful in determining a pathway to the team’s primary goal.