Project Overview: South West Region
Atamis was instructed in February 2011 to deliver a Spend Analysis solution to all Councils and Fire and Rescue Services in the South West Region for a 3 year period. The solution forms part of the Supplying The South West portal provided by Due North. The project brief incorporated:
As well as providing a regional view, Atamis provided individual solutions to each authority to enable detailed and secure analysis of their own data. It also allowed organisations to customise their own dashboards and reports.
Project Organisation
A Project Board was formed by SW Councils and Atamis with representatives from 3 influential Councils. The implementation was divided into 3 'Waves' initially, which later became 5 Waves after some Councils failed to meet deadlines for data delivery. Each Wave started with the distribution of a briefing pack detailing the data requirements, and concluded with a series of training courses. The first three Waves were completed in 6 months as scheduled. Atamis worked actively with technical representatives at each authority to share data extract routines from finance systems in order to minimise wasted effort.
Spend Classification
97% of spend from the previous Financial Year was classified at line item-level to both UNSPSC and ProClass 10.2, using a combination of web-spider intelligence and manual classification. According to client feedback, accuracy levels were around 90% to 95%. The system generated classification rules which enable monthly upload data to be classified automatically. And it enables clients to re-classify spend themselves. Annual classification refreshes are also included in the project to ensure a high level of accuracy is maintained throughout the 3 years of the project.
Personal Information
Particular consideration in this project was given to preventing access to individuals' names. Atamis cleaned the regional data of personal names by using an advanced algorithm that identifies instances of common personal titles, forenames and surnames with initials.
Regional Success
A total of £16bn of spend will be cleansed, classified and processed for 36 authorities in the South West Region over the course of this project. It is widely anticipated to generate extremely significant opportunities for savings at both authority and regional levels that will contribute towards the £153m efficiency savings target set by the South West Improvement and Efficiency Partnership.
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South West Improvement and Efficiency Partnership
The South West Improvement and Efficiency Partnership (SW IEP) is delivering three
Programmes in priority areas: Smarter Procurement, Construction and Asset
Management. The programmes provide tools, support and guidance to help councils
meet the needs of their communities in a way that generates
substantial efficiency savings, supports economically important
sectors and meets high environmental standards.
Taken together, the SW IEP Driving Value for Money
Programmes are on track to deliver at least £153 million of
efficiency savings over a 4 year timeframe.
The SW IEP Smarter Procurement Programme is promoting a collaborative approach to the procurement of
goods and services. Joining forces enables local authorities to achieve economies of scale and get better
deals from suppliers, as well as offering suppliers a more attractive and sustainable contract. Collaborative
procurement can release millions of pounds of savings which can be re-invested in essential front line
services.