• CASE STUDY

Category Strategy Implementation

This Australian university has over 56,000 students including more than 13,000 international students. Following a procurement capability assessment with the university, ArcBlue was engaged by the Properties & Facilities division to provide category strategy development for the Construction & Facilities Management Categories where there was historic resistance to change and the need for a coordinated approach.

ArcBlue created a steering group and reference group bringing in stakeholders from across the university as part of the category development to create ownership across the strategy. ArcBlue then conducted workshops with key stakeholders and category owners to find overall category solutions and assessed business needs and supply markets. Workshops were designed to challenge current ways of working.

Utilising our ArcBlue category value wheel we identified key areas of opportunity and developed a core strategy. Additionally, ArcBlue created a benefits-tracking process and detailed Dashboards with focused opportunity analysis activity.

Short-, medium- and long-term opportunities were identified and a verification process was undertaken.

This university identified multiple million-dollar savings since the implementation of the new category strategies for Construction and Facilities Management. With the success of the Category Strategy implementation, ArcBlue is now further developing specific sourcing strategies which were identified as part of the Category Management plans.

The following opportunities were included:

Facilities management:

  • Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) 22% savings; Lifts 30% savings; Fire Services 6.5% saving; and Grounds Maintenance 27% savings.
  • Total savings average = 24%

Construction:

  • Works planning and coordination
  • Establishing and managing panels/preferred suppliers including professional services, construction and minor works contractors
  • Lifecycle costing alignment with FM and Services maintenance and operating costs
  • Value engineering
  • Standardising approach to construction (allowing for lead time, accurate estimating and professional services review/management). 

Need help to implement effective category strategies?

CATalyst is designed to help procurement and stakeholder teams to analyse business needs and supply markets to develop robust category strategies, designed to improve value and with full stakeholder buy-in. Our methodology is supported by best practice category development tools, techniques and templates, adding energy, focus, clarity, and transparency to category strategy planning and implementation.

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