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The policy drivers towards community budgets, combined with the CSR and public spending cuts over the next few years, will inevitably lead to more shared services projects coming forward. Bethan Evans gives some advice on how to achieve them successfully. Many shared service projects simply involve collaboration between public sector partners and should be able to follow a well-trodden path of precedents. However, some more ambitious shared services projects will include the collective procurement of private sector providers/suppliers, and these raise a whole range of issues and challenges to address. The following are the six steps to success... Establish and agree shared goals In any shared services project, there will be slightly different motivations for participation by each of the players. There may be an implicit assumption that everyone is in it for the same reason. This is often not the case. Even different emphases on the desired outcomes of a project can crop up at a late stage and cause real difficulties with the articulation of evaluation criteria or specification details Participation for the prime purpose of improving collective service delivery could produce a very different approach/model to a project based primarily on cost reduction. At a really early stage of the project, it is important to thrash out exactly what each partner's motivation for collaboration is, and what their goal/success measure looks like. Only involve willing participants Understanding each participant's motivation to join the party will identify whether any of them are there on a somewhat reluctant basis. There can be a number of reasons for organisations signing up to a shared services project. These can include the need to be seen to be actively participating for internal or external stakeholders – for example, members, regulators or government – when there is absolutely no settled intention to go through with the process. The involvement of reluctant participants will create the obvious problems of lack of commitment, which will become clear very early to potential bidders and undermine their confidence in the delivery of the whole project. Also, a reluctance to put in sufficient resource or expertise to the project team will delay other active players in the project and cause tensions. . Deal with the wicked issues/elephants in the room as early as possible Most readers will have been involved in projects where many months of work can be undertaken, with no-one mentioning the one show-stopping issue which could derail the whole process but which no-one is willing to tackle. This is true of any major project or procurement exercise, but is multiplied by the number of participants in a shared services project. Real deal breakers need to be put on the table at the outset and worked through to see if compromise is possible, if a common aim can be achieved or if the project has to be openly structured to deal with a potential divergence of view/withdrawal of participants at a later stage. External advisers can usefully act as a catalyst for broaching the difficult subjects at an early stage. Scope the project carefully When all participants are clear as to their drivers for participation, their goals from the project and the potential show-stopping issues which need to be addressed, the scope of the project can emerge and this will flow through into detailed work on documentation, including, crucially, the advertisement in the Official Journal (‘the OJEU Notice'). From a legal perspective, the OJEU is one of the most important documents in a procurement process, being the one that parties challenging a process tend to look at first. This is because the OJEU describes the scope of the opportunity advertised to the market. Changing the scope of this opportunity by adding or withdrawing services and/or contracting authorities can represent a procurement risk, as it would potentially reach the principles of equal treatment and transparency. Set up strong governance and decision-making arrangements Delivering a complex competitive dialogue procurement process with just one contracting authority is a challenge. Delivering this with four or five participating authorities is a multiple challenge. In order to ensure that tight procurement deadlines are met – in everyone's interests, including the bidders to keep down costs and show competence in delivering the project – it is essential that a robust governance arrangement is put in place at an early stage of the project. Careful timetabling of key decisions with critical paths mapped through will help to smooth the way. If a joint decision-making forum has been established between participating organisations – for example, a local authority joint committee – care must be taken to spell out in detail those issues which legitimately have been delegated from each participating authority to the join forum, and those which have to go individually back to the home authority for decision. Extensive delegation – with safeguards – to officers who can meet together as a joint project team will considerably assist in speedy decision-making and shared ownership of issues and solutions. Think through the unthinkable Linked to participants' abilities to close their minds to difficult issues is a shared ability to close minds to what happens if things go wrong. In a shared services procurement there are multiple possibilities, including individual participants pulling out, wanting to change the scope, or additional authorities suddenly deciding they want to become more involved. Talking through all the ‘what ifs' and deciding on the appropriate outcomes will be time well spent. Having a strong exit strategy will also tend to flush out a discussion on what happens if the worst comes to pass, and especially what financial implications there may be. This will also highlight authorities which may be participating with less than an absolute commitment to delivering the full project. Bethan Evans is commercial partner at Bevan Brittan

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WHITEHALL

Six steps to success

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