Excess Mortality Report
The Silent Toll: Highlighting the Surge in Non-Covid Excess Mortality Amongst the Young and Exploring Potential Causes
The Pandemic is now a memory, yet non-Covid deaths continue to rise, for reasons the UK’s top healthcare authorities are unable to explain. The UK government’s own data shows Excess Mortality spiked most significantly among young people in 2022 and 2023, and shows a substantial increase in deaths due to heart failure during the same period – in 2023 alone, 7 times more people died unexpectedly, for reasons unrelated to COVID, than died in the single worst night of the Blitz. We provide insights into the excess mortality trends, explore potential causes, and urge a proper and broader investigation of the true root causes.
Driving Strategic Impact: A Curzon Consulting Guide to Procurement Excellence
As management consultants, we help clients achieve substantial cost savings and efficiencies through procurement transformations. But truly effective transformations require surmounting common challenges like limited spend visibility and stakeholder alignment.
Based on a recent engagement delivering over £5M in savings, here are our proven tips for procurement transformation success:
Optimise spend visibility
Robust spend analysis is crucial. Categorise expenditures and pinpoint top suppliers and contracts per category. Without clean baseline data, it’s impossible to identify savings levers. Advanced analytics and mining uncover hidden insights, while stakeholder interviews provide a qualitative context.
Benchmark and identify gaps
Benchmark pricing and performance versus industry best practices to reveal overpayment. Consolidate volumes for improved leverage. Deep supply market analysis uncovers alternative vendors and guides negotiations.
Strategise and priortise
Conduct opportunity assessments to inform transformation planning. Develop tailored category-specific sourcing strategies. Model potential savings scenarios and sequence initiatives based on impact, effort, and stakeholder readiness.
Secure stakeholder alignment
Amidst change, align stakeholders through clear communication and early buy-in. Identify key decision-makers and influencers. Educate on best practices and projected bottom-line impact. Procurement must shed its tactical image and be seen as a strategic function driving millions in bottom-line impact.
Relentlessly implement
With the strategy set, focus intensely on implementation. Maintain discipline in negotiations while preserving supplier relationships. Enforce contract compliance and tail spend management.
Continuously improve
Sustaining change requires continuous improvement. Redesign operating models, policies, KPIs, training, and integrate new tech and ways of working. Build analytics to monitor savings and flag waste recurrence. Institutionalising change is the hallmark of procurement leaders.
After meeting our cost-savings goals, we leveraged our award-winning assessment framework to ensure the procurement organisation’s long-term success. Our framework evaluates Procurement across five dimensions: People, Strategy, Systems, Governance, and Management. This data-driven approach identified gaps and enabled us to strategise implementing best practices. Ultimately, these steps addressed challenges, so the procurement organisation can expand its influence and be viewed as a strategic partner across all business units.
In conclusion
As trusted consultants, we overcome inertia and silos to deliver rapid yet lasting transformation. With deep expertise and cross-industry perspective, we objectively assess opportunities, align stakeholders, and implement best practices. The result is simplified sourcing, lower costs, reduced risks, increased efficiency, and strategic impact.
Let us conduct an initial diagnostic for your procurement organisation. We will benchmark performance, identify savings levers, and provide a roadmap to deliver value.
CONTACT US TO FIND OUT HOW WE CAN HELP
Delivering greater procurement efficiencies for a construction company
The issue
- £1billion division split into 6 semi-autonomous business units, spending £450m per annum on materials and sub-contracted services
- Each business unit under revenue and margin pressure especially those dependant on public sector work
- By re-establishing good procurement practices a modest 3% savings target was agreed upon, the stretch being that the full cash saving had to be delivered in-year
- No single picture of procurement spend or performance compared to the external market
- Procurement & supply chain savings were already baked into business unit budgets and there was pressure from plc to deliver over and above this
Solution
- Created a definitive ‘spend cube’ and with it a single set of numbers
- Completed a top-down and bottom-up analysis of spend at the detailed category/supplier level and agreed impactable spend
- Created and executed a prioritised implementation plan closely monitoring and recording the benefits as they are realised
- Redesigned the P&SC organisation bringing in the necessary skills and expertise as required
The results
- In-year cash savings of £8million with an exit run rate of £10million per annum
- New operating model fully installed and driving benefits (sustainability)
- Benefits fully traceable within business unit P&L
An award-winning team
CONTACT US TO FIND OUT HOW WE CAN HELP
Procurement Organisation Value / Maturity Assessment
Challenge
After a challenging year during which financials have been impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic, our client launched an ambitious strategic initiative aiming at becoming more efficient, going back to growth and delivering sustainable value to Consumers and Doctors.
Curzon Consulting was instructed to conduct a full Procurement Organisation Review & Spend Opportunity Assessment
Curzon's approach
Curzon conducted a complete review of the procurement function. It included a quantitative part aiming at identifying cost savings opportunities and a qualitative part aiming at assessing the maturity of the organisation and value delivered to the business.
Quantitative Assessment
- Cleaned and categorised spend data
- Provided full spend transparency, baselined spend, volume and unit cost by category, supplier and hospital
- Conducted Category deep dive for each key category, identifying opportunities and sourcing levers
- Identified and quantified savings potential via internal and external benchmarking
- Prioritised source plan with savings targets by spend category
- High level 3-Year business plan
Value/Maturity Assessment
- Assessed procurement organisation against best practices in 8 dimensions.
- Quantitatively and qualitatively assessed the procurement team, conducted time analysis, salary benchmark & reviewed performance
- Business Partnering and perceived value : Interviewed key business stakeholders across all divisions, engaged with all Board Members to collect feedback and clarify expectations
- Assessed procurement influence across all spend areas,
- Defined and costed new (to-be) procurement organisation
Impact
- Identified broken links between Procurement and the Business : Procurement was perceived as a tactical team, good for tactical negotiations, but rarely involved in any strategic discussions.
- As a consequence, procurement was able to influence only a small part of non-strategic spend
- Curzon worked with the Senior Management Team and Key Stakeholder to define Business expectations and open the door to Strategic Procurement.
- Assessed existing Team, identified Gaps and suggested adequate procurement profiles
- Designed new procurement organisation, including sizing and targeted organisation costs
- Review external spend across 20+ categories
- Assessed procurement effort to category management, applied benchmarks and identified opportunities
- Identified substantial cost savings opportunities, leading to multi- £m cost savings
- Defined 3 years implementation plan, leading to more than 80% of the external being addressed.
- Curzon was engaged for the implementation phase of Procurement Transformation
Contact our Procurement service line lead,Stephane Boroncelli, to find out more
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TCO Analysis
Challenge
A sourcing initiative was conducted by the procurement team, leading to the selection of preferred suppliers and the phasing out a major incumbent supplier
Pricing agreement was based on lenses, which represent part of the total ophthalmic spend
Decision was made with no consultation of clinical key stakeholders, leading to low compliance to sourcing decision
In the meantime, as a retaliation, the incumbent supplier substantially increased pricing
Curzon's approach
- Created full spend transparency on Ophthalmic Spends
- Sourcing decision was based on 30% of the total spend only
- Applied TCO analysis
- Identified risks as un-addressed part of the spend led to major price increase, wiping out all benefits of the sourcing initiative
- Defined requirements and specifications on 100% spend
- Conducted additional negotiations with selected suppliers
- Identified and implemented further savings opportunities through pack harmonisation
Impact
- Sped-up implementation and increased Clinical compliance
- Eliminated negative commercial impact and achieved multi £m additional savings
- Achieved operational efficiencies through pack standardisation
Contact our Procurement service line lead,Stephane Boroncelli, to find out more
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Value based Procurement
Challenge
Our client, the largest European manufacturer, was trying to rationalise its product materials contractors. With several billion pounds worth of expenditure and over 300 contractors to manage, the state of the relationship was very tactical between procurement And the supply base. As most of the products were unique, prices were negotiated periodically with little understanding of cost drivers and value for money. At the same time, perceived value of the contractors was based on Business Stakeholders emotional preferences.
Curzon's approach
We launched a major review program aiming at maximising the value received from contractors while optimising prices and achieving cost savings.
We engaged, early on, with all of our client’s Business Units and onboarded them through the transformation journey., We ensured Business Stakeholders were not just kept informed but part of the solution.
Value
- Reviewed and implemented improved SLA’s
- Developed Unique contractor value assessment technique where Quality, level of services, innovation, sustainability where all factored-in a comparative way
- Incentivised and rewarded suppliers bringing innovation and helping with sustainability strategy
Price-wise
- Brought cost transparency through costing formulas
- Implemented advanced negotiation techniques to optimise pricing
- Conducted global contractor market review for all types of materials
- Created competitions in the monopolistic areas
- Went to market in areas dominated by powerful historic contractors
- Proactively collaborated with key suppliers to implement efficiencies & improvements
Impact
As we stayed well beyond the sourcing process we ensured the following benefits materialised.:
- Stakeholders collaboration and procurement seen as key partner to the business
- Multi-million £ Cost savings achieved over 3 years in a row
- Increased of level of services, delivery performance and products quality
- Full support to client’s sustainability objective