SSI Project: Tools & Techniques

The Strategic Supplier Intelligence (SSI) Project involves making better use of supplier intelligence to support London's collective negotiating power in its relationships with key suppliers.

To do this, the Project Team is employing a range of tools and techniques under the banner of Supplier Relationship Management (SRM).  They are:

• Assembling intelligence about each key supplier using 'information arbitrage';
• Gathering data about individual boroughs' existing relationships with key suppliers;
• Interpreting high-level performance data using a Common Assessment Framework; and
• Agreeing an SRM Strategy and a Supplier Engagement Plan with each key supplier to take the relationship forward.

'Information Arbitrage'

Assembling knowledge and intelligence about a supplier is essential to understanding what is driving the supplier commercially and helps identify opportunities for mutual benefit.

The process involves gathering information prepared by and about the supplier from different sources and for different audiences: for customers, suppliers, employees, competition authorities, regulators, market analysts and investors.  Often as much can be deduced from the differences between pieces of information, as from the similarities.

Common Assessment Framework

The complexities of contracts and relationships can sometimes mean it is difficult to make an analysis of boroughs' perceptions of the performance of key suppliers. 

The Common Assessment Framework (CAF) is a tool developed by the Office of Government Commerce (OGC) and adapted by LCE for use in this project.

Each borough is asked to rate each key supplier against a range of performance criteria.  This then allows the team to build a picture of the supplier's performance across the region and to spot where performance is consistent and where there are differences in the boroughs' perceptions of performance and value for money.

SRM Strategy and Supplier Engagement Plan

Once the data has been gathered and analysed, a short Supplier Relationship Management Strategy is drafted for agreement - firstly between participating boroughs and then with the supplier.

The Strategy includes:

• headline data from the 'information arbitrage' process including market share, profitability and rate of growth;
• headline results from the Common Assessment Framework;
• boroughs' perceptions of the supplier's principal capabilities and weaknesses; and
• a summary of key issues raised by both the boroughs and the supplier about the relationship.

Finally, a Supplier Engagement Plan then sets out what the parties aim to achieve from the first six months in terms of issue resolution and the delivery of mutual benefits.

Find out more

If you would like to find out more about the tools and techniques used in the SSI Project, email the Project Team.