Renegotiating the group’s supply contracts

When we counted, the group had forty-one supply contracts, nine of them for the same box of gloves. Each clinic had signed its own at some point, usually in a hurry.

Fewer suppliers, less saving than promised

The obvious plan was to consolidate and use our volume. It worked, up to a point: prices came down by about 6%, against the 15% the board had pencilled in. Small clinics had already been getting decent prices from local suppliers who knew them.

Where the money was

The larger saving came from the terms. We stopped paying for next-day delivery we never used, moved to one monthly invoice per clinic, and wrote down what happens when an order is late. The finance team got back two days a month, which nobody had put in the business case.