Prior to COVID19 hitting the UK, a telecoms procurement could take somewhere between 3 months – 6 months. Since March Soniza has run 5 procurement exercises all being completed in less than 4 weeks. This includes requirements gathering, RFP, supplier engagement, supplier presentations and contract award. So what’s changed?
Obviously, urgency has played a big part in the process but what else?
For a start, staff focus has been mandatory, staff haven’t had to juggle diaries quite so much and the efficiencies of video conferences and collaboration has made requirements workshops much easier to manage and get engagement on. Compliance, due diligence and company review has been more direct and heavily reliant on accreditations, analyst scores and ISO standards met. Solution analysis has been more collaborative, a lot more supplier engagement, presentations and proof of concepts are happening at scale in real-time which feeds directly into the solution evaluation process.
So what does this mean for the future of procurement?
The key here is understanding that flexibility and transparency need to be evident, some clients will want to take advantage of a new way to procurement, some will want to go back to the old way and some are bound by regulation. The good news is that suppliers and processes and now in place to ensure whatever method clients prefer, it can be achieved with the right expertise and focus.