SME Procurement Savings

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SME Procurement Savings

Cut costs. Make savings. Reduce overheads.

Simple enough to say. But in practice, much harder to implement. Especially with finite resources.

Our SME Procurement Savings service is dedicated to supporting SMEs to not only cut costs, but to manage their costs, contracts and suppliers effectively, future-proofing your organisation as well as delivering on the bottom line with immediate effect.

Aspire to achieve

An immediate and sustainable reduced cost base
Optimised supplier contracts
A well-managed supply base
Protection from sudden price increases
Reduced risk from market volatility

Make procurement savings today

Why Choose Us

Speed of Service

When it comes to reducing costs, you’ll want to act swiftly. Our experienced team are quick to assess your business needs, identifying opportunities for greatest ROI and implementing a cost reduction strategy at pace.

Depth of Understanding

As an SME ourselves, we understand the unique challenges faced by smaller businesses. We’re not aloof consultants, we’ve done the day job in organisations like yours, and we know how SMEs tick and, importantly, where the true opportunities and priorities lie.

Value Add

We don’t just produce cost reduction plans. We focus on results that provide a longer-term view for maximum long-term impact. And we support clients to think ethically in their procurement, delivering positive social value outcomes too.

Demonstrable Impact

We have a proven track record of delivering exceptional cost reductions for our clients.

How it Works

Spend and Opportunity Assessment

Barkers work in partnership with you to analyse your organisation’s current spend and supply base. This will result in an Opportunity Assessment to prioritise and maximise opportunities for your organisation. Following this, a full market assessment is then conducted to collect alternative supplier offerings, ensuring opportunities identified are both competitive and create most value for your organisation.

Cost Reduction

Demand – We address the volumes and quantities required by the client and offer our insight to suggest changes which may help to reduce this demand.
Specification – We’ll challenge the specifications of contracts, products and services within the business. In doing so we get to the root of the core requirements, understand where there can be flexibility in the specifications, and make decisions on where cuts could be made without loss to quality or efficiency. Of course, we’ll always take into consideration contractual obligations, termination clauses and more.
Supply – Finally, we’ll address the supply itself via the open market. We’ll identify alternative suppliers and assess their credentials for delivery to the client.

Because we believe in ethical procurement principles at Barkers, we’ll work with clients to gain a greater appreciation of the ways in which the procurement function can deliver social value through its day-to-day activities, including as part of a cost reduction programme. Whilst maintaining a focus on cost reduction as the main driver, our team can help clients achieve enhanced results whilst still achieving primary cost objectives.

Transactional Management

The operational running of the cost transformation programme will be addressed during the transactional management phase. We’ll ensure that procurement teams have the mechanisms to buy correctly and the technology in place to purchase appropriately.

Results

Your organisation will benefit from reduced costs, increased efficiency and easier spend management.

Outcomes

We focus on producing outcomes that really matter for SMEs:

Reduced costs, straight away
A cost reduction plan that makes a difference long-term
Enhanced relationships with suppliers
Robust contracts that offer protection for your organisation
Ethical procurement practices that align to your values

Make procurement savings today

CASE STUDIES

Under Barker’s leadership we reached a final recommendation in what has been a highly complex selection process (both in terms of content and navigating the stakeholder aspects). This would not have been possible without the Barkers team; Barkers’ Delivery Director Mark Elkington has added significant value in his contribution through-out. Being able to put complete trust in such an experienced and dedicated pair of hands has helped us hugely, and been invaluable. Rachel has been incredibly engaged and capable on the commercial governance work and the whole team, Mark, Rachel and Nadeem, have worked tirelessly managing some highly complex and challenging issues.

FMCG Client

Head of Indirect Procurement

We have been working with Barkers for nearly 10 months and they have successfully delivered Coupa to four divisions of our organisation which is going through huge change and the centralisation of many functions. This has created many obstacles for the project team to overcome, but all Barkers team members have taken this in their stride and dealt with difficult scenarios professionally. Their pragmatic, flexible and personable approach has been extremely valuable to our delivery, something much larger consultancy firms would not be able to accommodate. We are close to completing the fifth and final deployment of Coupa to a division which has many more nuances within its billing processes, but due to time constraints put onto the project team from outside of the project teams’ control, Barkers have again adapted their delivery to match the needs of their customer whilst ensuring what they deliver is still up to the highest standards. It has been a pleasure and a breath of fresh air to deal with a smaller consultancy firm whose employees ensure they get to understand their customers needs and offer solutions without charging extra for the privilege of providing their knowledge and assistance.

Paul Thwaites

Senior Project Manager, Vanquis Banking Group

The Barkers appointment has been a tremendous success; the teams' technical ability, flexibility, guidance and pragmatism has been first class. It is a true example of client and partner collaboration.

Steven Schools

Head of Procurement and Supplier Management, Vanquis Banking Group

Barkers approach to our challenge delivery impressed me. Jersey Electricity faces a lot of different challenges, and therefore it is tough to find the right people – especially people that would fit our requirements. Being a small and strongly diversified business in a geographically isolated environment, we needed a versatile specialist to come in and advise on multiple different topics. Barkers delivered just that. The consultant working with us was not only strong in the primary field of expertise (Procurement) but could as firmly ask challenging questions to technical people. Working in this way allowed Barkers to expand the primary scope and Jersey Electricity to receive valuable support.

Mark Preece

Operations Director, Jersey Electricity

I have worked with Barkers in the past and so was aware of both their strong procurement and commercial excellence as well as their relevant market sector knowledge. Once the team were briefed on the outcomes we required and the timeframe to deliver, we worked together on the feasibility of our plan to build something achievable. This allowed us to manage internal expectations and build trust in the plan. With any procurement project there are changes and unforeseen challenges that can impact timelines and this project was no exception. Barkers supported us through the changes, challenged them where appropriate, and amended the work where changes were necessary. Barkers always put the project and the outcomes first showing a high degree of integrity. The outcome Barkers delivered was timely, robust and showed a clear benefit, I would not hesitate in using Barkers again.

David Anderson

Head of Commercial, OVO Energy

The Barkers Led Procurement transformation at Argent had an immediate positive impact. The Barkers team positively engaged with the business and helped deliver procurement improvements to the indirect categories of spend. These changes enabled a step changed for how procurement was viewed across the business.

Nicola Dean

CFO, Argent Energy

An inspiring partnership, recognising and developing creative solutions to local social issues in the most effective way. Barkers and Bolton Family are a compelling example of people coming together from right across the community, with passion, authenticity and trust.

Lisa Charles

Director Of Business Services, Bolton at Home

We engaged Barkers to help us conduct an end to end review of Procurement. This included a tailored approach to our business objectives and our Procurement capability with a full set of recommendations that we have implemented over the past 12 months. The end result has been a successful programme of change, that has delivered a solid set of foundations to take our business and the function forward. Our lead partner on the ground was fantastic, and really stepped up to the challenges we faced and became an integral enabler of change.

Karen Lounds

Business Services Director, Tata Chemicals

We selected Barkers primarily for the depth of their procurement experience but also because their ethical approach and commitment to the creation of social value differentiates them from other consultancies. The Barkers team worked alongside our staff to enhance the team and accelerate our delivery of budget impacting savings and the creation of localised social value.

David Levy

Head of Strategic Procurement, Seven Force Strategic Collaboration