Best ways to use YPO frameworks in the public sector
YPO and Access Adam Care Commissioning have been in partnership since 2020. This partnership has been able to provide bespoke commissioning solutions to customers across health and social care, transport, housing, and procurement.
But what are the benefits of this partnership? How does it overcome the challenges the public sector face during the procurement cycle and what are the best ways to use YPO frameworks?
By the end of this article, all these questions should be answered as well how a YPO framework agreement works, and how working with both YPO and Access Adam Care Commissioning is the best way to procure the services and goods your local authority needs at the best value for money.
At The Access Group we are aware of the challenges of procurement in the public sector and they can be difficult to overcome, especially when transitioning to digital procurement. We want to help local authorities make the process of commissioning and procuring the services they tend as easy as possible, at a better value, and take a fraction of the time.
This article will review who YPO are, how they work, why we decided to partner with them, as well as the best ways your local community can work with both of us to get the best outcomes.
Who are YPO?
YPO is a public sector procurement organisation and is one of the largest procurement organisations dedicated to working with the public sector, including local authorities, schools, and emergency services to name a few.
YPO is publicly owned by 13 local authorities meaning any profits they make get returned to public sector customers to help deliver a better service at a better value for money.
They operate as a public sector buying organisation supplying products, goods, and services to its members, with their primary aim to streamline the procurement process, save costs, and ensure compliance with procurement regulations for its members.
YPO works by establishing framework agreements and contracts with pre-approved suppliers to allow their members to access suppliers and procure services more efficiently and safely.
What is a YPO framework agreement?
A YPO framework is a procurement framework to simplify and streamline the procurement process for the public sector. Their framework involves structured agreements between YPO and suppliers to determine terms and conditions, price, and other relevant and important information for each specific contract.
These frameworks then go through a competitive tendering process where suppliers bid to be included based on how they best the meet the criteria of the framework, as well service standards, and regulations.
Once the tendering process is complete, public sector organisations can then select suppliers directly from the framework with full confidence that they already meet their needs and have been evaluated and rated as fully compliant.
Why are YPO frameworks important?
YPO frameworks are important for many different reasons. Primarily they are important to help public sector organisations overcome the challenges they face when commissioning and procuring services, as well as enable a smooth transition to digital procurement and e-procurement methods. This then helps local authorities reach their demand quicker, avoid delays, and procure services at the best value for money.
1.Efficiency
YPO frameworks provide a streamlined and efficient procurement process as they eliminate the need for extensive and repetitive tendering procedures to save time and resources for the public sector.
This helps local authorities use outcome-based commissioning to focus on what their residents need and want to improve their outcomes across the whole community by tailoring their services as demands and needs change to always meet their local community’s needs.
2. Cost Savings
YPO frameworks help reduce costs for public sector organisations by consolidating demand and negotiating contracts with suppliers to ensure the best value for money.
3. Compliance and Risk Management
YPO frameworks ensure compliance and regulatory procurement standards are constantly followed. Through assessing each supplier before they are onboarded this prevents and reduces the risk of working with any unreliable or non-compliant vendors to enhance transparency and accountability in the public sector.
4. Flexibility and Adaptability
YPO frameworks are also beneficial as they can be regularly updated to keep up with any legislation changes in the industry. This allows the public sector to adapt to more advanced technology as it emerges to streamline the procurement process even further.
5. Collaboration
Another reason why YPO frameworks are important in the public sector is because it encourages the use of a co-production approach across the sector to promote continuous improvements and drive for further efficiencies in the public service delivery.
Through using YPO frameworks public sector organisations can share experiences, expertise, best practices and innovative ideas to improve processes further so the right support and services can be delivered across all local authorities.
What are the best ways to use YPO frameworks?
Due to the many benefits YPO frameworks offer the public sector including how they encourage collaboration to help improve and streamline the procurement process further, we decided at Access Adam Care Commissioning to create a partnership with them.
We have been in partnership with YPO since 2020 and all of our activity has focused on supporting a variety of local authorities and CCG departments including procurement, commissioning, service delivery, contracts, and finance.
Here this partnership focuses on their commissioning solutions framework which helps support a variety of public sector colleagues including procurement, commissioning, service delivery, and contracts.
This framework offers more than just access to Dynamic Purchasing Systems (DPS) and technology, it can cover any area of spend within the public sector or health setting from health and social care, transport, and housing.
As many of our customers have come on board to us via YPO frameworks, this partnership has given them two reputable companies and the reassurance they are using market-approved products to deliver tangible value for their local communities.
What are the benefits of the YPO and Access Adam Care Commissioning partnership?
As we have already discussed public sector procurement in recent years has become more and more challenging. With demand increasing, budgets remaining static, and more dependency on local authorities happening, public sector procurement can be a lengthy process which can take weeks to complete.
In a sector where emergency support or services are needed, waiting weeks can end up costing local authorities a lot more as well as putting resident’s health and mental wellbeing at risk. This in turn, can cause even more dependency on the public sector when demand is already high and it increases the risk of individuals waiting longer for the services they require or being placed in accommodation or offered services that don’t cater to their needs.
Through our partnership with YPO we work hard to make sure these risks are minimised so less time can be spent filing paperwork, uploading documents and reviewing each supplier manually and instead digitise the entire process to make it easier to find information, make it quicker to process, and more importantly quicker to deliver the services residents in your local area need.
Our partnership provides a variety of benefits for the public sector but arguably it has delivered two major benefits which has helped streamline public sector procurement massively to deliver better outcomes.
1. Reduced Timescales
Through working with us at Access Adam Care Commissioning and using commissioning solutions framework under YPO, customers do not need to run a full tender. This not only reduces the need to go to tender, as a single supplier framework, local authorities and NHS organisations do not need to undertake any additional procurement exercises.
This is highly beneficial for local authorities and NHS organisations as it helps reduce the time needed on administrative tasks as we can automate all the processes for them. This ways more time can be spent on more critical tasks so workloads can be more manageable.
This partnership also then reduces the time spent securing and developing a procurement solution and instead gives councils the flexibility to onboard new compliant suppliers at any time.
2. Quality of Spend
Another major benefit of procuring Access Adam through the YPO framework is that it gives you more control over your spending by developing a solution to fit your needs and budgets accordingly.
This then prevents the risk of your local authority overspending your budget and leaving other individuals without the support they need.
Through the partnership the cost of the service is based on individual customer requirements to offer a range of payments options which can then be agreed between the suppliers, providers, and the customer themselves to ensure they get the best value for money.
For example one of our customers, Sutton Council, found by partnering with Access Adam and implementing our transport management solution through YPO, they were successfully able to increase their local provider market to improve their route bidding process.
They found that the number of their providers went from 17 to 32 and that they had on average 14.4 bids per route now compared to 4.5 previously. This also helped to reduce the average cost per child when optimising their home-to-school transport, as the average cost per child went from £9.9k to £7.7k generating over £683,000 worth of savings.
Once customers start using the solution therefore, they will often see both immediate and long-cost savings as our system helps to increase marketplace quality and competition, and most importantly our customers can see real-time results in the local populations they serve.
Summarising the YPO and Access Adam Care Commissioning Framework
In this article I have reviewed who YPO are, what their frameworks are and why they are important for the public sector. Whilst summarising the benefits of using YPO frameworks this article has reviewed why at Access Adam Care Commissioning we decided to become partners with them to streamline and improve public sector procurement further.
Through this partnership we have been able to help many local authorities overcome the challenges of procurement and make the transition to e-procurement methods as smooth as possible with minimal disruption and continuous improvement for better outcomes.
This article has highlighted that through our partnership we have not only be able to help reduce costs significantly as soon as a council uses our solutions, but we have also been able to massively reduce the time spent doing administrative tasks by automating all the process and centralising all the information you need in one place.
This has allowed our customers to improve the services they procure for their local communities by shortening the procurement process and prevent individuals waiting longer for the services they need. Through working together with YPO, local councils can also benefit from using highly flexible commissioning solutions which can adapt as both support needs and legislation needs change.
For more first-hand experiences in how our Access Adam Commissioning solutions have helped local councils streamline their procurement processes, discover our commissioning case studies today where you can see how we help councils procure the best services across health and social care, housing, and transport to get the best outcomes at the best value for money.
Contact us today and lets get started strategically commissioning the services your local community needs when they need it to get the best outcomes possible without overspending your budgets.
