Bristol City Council chooses framework for contract management
Roger Searle, Principle IT Officer, Bristol City Council    

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Bristol is a vibrant and thriving city in the southwest of England with a community population of nearly 400,000. This necessitates Bristol City Council to spend over £400 million a year obtaining a vast range of supplies, works and services from the external market. Procurement strategy, policy guidelines and procedures drive forward the authorities’ best value practice for procurement, with specialist procurement decisions being made by the individual departments who have the knowledge to make an informed choice.

Information & communication technology service delivery
Information Technology is pivotal to the smooth running of Bristol City Council. They depend on IT for much of their day to day work, from collecting council tax payments or paying suppliers through to ensuring their 16,000 staff, who provide vital services to the people of Bristol, are paid on time.

IT also provides a wide range of vital management information systems which underpin the smooth and efficient operation of the City Council, which is at the forefront of practice in its use of new technology.

Why the need to automate?
With a growing number of contracts within the ICT Service Delivery department it was becoming necessary to increase the visibility of contract information.

We wanted to ensure that all our contracts, particularly long-term contracts, had plenty of time to be reviewed and for changes to be made, enabling the Council to effectively monitor terms and conditions and achieve best value.

“With many large contracts to manage we wanted to ensure that we could schedule enough time to review these contracts in a fully controllable way.”

We knew that with an automated solution all contracts would be in one central location allowing all relevant employees to effectively review them. However, what was most favourable about automating this process was the ability to schedule email notifications to alert us to contracts due to expire, this would give us sufficient time to review and either cancel the contract or re-negotiate better rates.

A more efficient process of managing our contracts also means we can allocate more time and resources to deliver our services to the community of Bristol.

Why framework?

“framework is a great product, and Bristol City Council plans to
exploit it’s potential and maximise it’s use.”

After reviewing framework we chose this solution primarily to: Improve administration efficiencies Centralise contract information Understand financial aspects and implications of all contracts Receive notification of contract renewal dates to improve and control contract negotiations

With framework we can store all our contract and supplier information, including associated documents, in one easy to view central repository with powerful search and reporting capabilities.

At present we have nearly 100 contracts on the system and around ten employees, from various departments, using framework. We can store scanned copies of contracts and other associated documents and add notes pertinent to the contract allowing rapid access to contract information.

We found that having supplier information, contact details and contract conditions in one central repository has eliminated the need for tedious searching of paper contracts and unnecessary phone calls when looking for information.

Furthermore, one of the most powerful features of framework is its ease of configuration to our requirements and yet remains user friendly and intuitive.

Having previously been a customer of Software Europe, we were aware of the high standards of customer service that would be provided after our purchase of framework. We were very impressed with the employees and the customer service pre, during and post implementation from Software Europe was excellent.

“framework has given us excellent visibility into all of our contracts, plus it ensures physical security of the actual contracts. This allows us to stay on top of renewal and cancellation deadlines, gain procurement leverage and put us in control of the entire contract lifecycle.”

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Or call 01522 881300 to discuss how framework can improve the way you manage your contracts.