Ofsted

Ofsted is the Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills. It inspects and regulates services that care for children and young people, and services providing education and skills for learners of all ages.

Over the last couple of years, the organisation has been looking for an alternative contract management solution. Ofsted wants to remove itself from working in spreadsheets. Its vision was to implement a system that had a forward look on their procurement process and the functionality to provide spend analysis.

Target’s Accord Contracts Management System has enabled Ofsted to gain control and automation with its contracts throughout the procurement process. Additionally, Accord’s flexibility and Target’s skills has also enabled the organisation to build spend analysis requirements, which could not be found in other off-the-shelf systems.

Target’s Contract Management System is providing the Commercial Team with a cost-effective, user-friendly system that allows them to easily share information across the organisation and have clear visibility over contracts.

Through initial consultancy meetings, Target was able to identify and evaluate Ofsted’s driver for change and how they wanted to move forward. Working collaboratively, Target has enabled the Ofsted Accord system to provide additional functionality around:

• Approval Process ensuring everything is being checked within the Project Tracker.
• Spend Analysis Reports, including:
  • update spend analysis
  • spend v contract value
  • spend per Category
  • spend per cost centre/business area
  • spend per Procurement Type
  • summary and detailed -spend under contract v not under contract
  • unmatched spend analysis

• Data importing from external systems.
• Greater visibility on procurement processes that need to be reviewed and improved.
• Contract overview providing a forward look into contracts to understand which are expiring and plan ahead to explore where they are in the procurement process.

Pauline Leigh, Head of Commercial at Ofsted, said: “We had been looking for a while to find a system like Accord, with the right amount of core functionality that could easily be configured to our needs.”

“Working initially with Target’s Consultancy Services we were able to map our ideas and explain what we wanted in a Contract Management System. Target understood our requirements and provided solutions to some things we’ve not even considered before. Through their knowledge and expertise, we were able to gain peace of mind that we were not missing anything in our procurement process.

“Accord’s flexibility to be tailored to our requirements is fantastic. It has helped us improve how we manage our contracts, and we’ve also gained valuable insights into our spend, giving us a better understanding of our processes and where they can be enhanced.”

She continued: “We would not hesitate to recommend Accord’s services. They have been brilliant in identifying our business challenges and providing appropriate solutions to match our needs. We have also been very impressed with the speed of their responses to our queries and how helpful they’ve been throughout the project.”