Dunedin City Council adopts Lean-Agile Procurement

Dunedin City Council (DCC) has adopted the Lean Agile Procurement (LAP) approach during the selection of a Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) solution from intelligent procurement, contracts and supplier management platform provider, Portt. 

This highly collaborative approach reduced the usual procurement process from three months to three days. It ensured Portt's solution was the best fit to automate supplier contracting activities, streamline approvals, manage flows and capture rich data for DCC. 

DCC represents the 114,347 citizens that live in Dunedin, the second-largest city in the South Island of New Zealand. 

Procurement in local government with a cumulative value of over NZD $100,000 requires an open and competitive procurement process. Procuring a CLM solution was expected to be over that threshold. 

From DCC's experience, a complex software systems sourcing project would take an average of three months. 

The Council had previously encountered problems procuring complex Software as a Service (SaaS) technology solutions. They chose to leverage lean-agile procurement as the sourcing tool to identify better the type of software partner they wanted to work with.    

A two-day LAP off-site event was held in Dunedin, where Portt had the opportunity to understand DCC's desired outcomes and then framed their recommendations accordingly. 

This involved exchanges between the two teams, and both used the LAP process to scope the requirements to the ultimate solution to reach DCC's objectives.  

Robert West, General Manager, Dunedin City Council, says: "The importance of using the face-to-face agile process to allow for an honest 'up front' conversation on the scope and having Portt challenge and test our thinking was essential to getting the right outcome for this critical project for the Council, cannot be underestimated."

"We came away from a two-day intensive process with all the terms of the deal agreed, a signed contract and a working relationship between the Council and Portt staff already established." 

"What more could we ask for? A great result," says West.  

The partnership approach Portt had taken throughout the procurement process gave DCC early confidence that its working style would be complementary to the way its team operated, and this would contribute to a positive long-term working relationship.  

Serge Kolman, Procurement & Contracts Manager at Dunedin City Council, says: "Both DCC and Portt leaned into the two-day event even before the contract was awarded, and this approach has allowed for open communication and problem-solving, resulting in a collaborative and trusted environment where both parties could build a strong relationship."  

The strong relationship both parties established sets a solid foundation for future collaboration, with both organisations expected to work together in a collaborative, cooperative and flexible manner throughout the Portt CLM implementation.

The benefit for Portt is that utilising the LAP process meant that the typical cost to respond to a public tender was reduced by 40%, and the enterprise sales cycle was also reduced by half.  

Mark Reddy, Head of Growth for Spend Management at Portt, says: "From the supplier side, the significance of the investment required to input into the LAP process versus the more traditional way of running a tender process was far less."

"To put into context, the process took days, not months, to complete and as we were able to work closely with the project team and stakeholders, this resulted in an immediate clear direction on which we could all move forward with." 

Utilised across most industry verticals and public and private sectors, Portt is designed for procurement functions that desire efficiency gains, quality data and compliant contract and procurement teams.