Background
Derbyshire Constabulary oversees an area of 1,000 square miles and in an average 24-hour period deals with 400 emergency calls, of which 60 are domestic incidents, and 40 arrests. Alongside protecting the community, national policing initiatives mean it is tasked with rapid digitisation, requiring the large-scale procurement of mission-critical IT. This complex and costly process required Insight’s help.
Challenge
Police forces across the UK are undergoing digital transformations to enable new ways of working and keep pace with modern criminality.
But this has caused forces like Derbyshire Constabulary to experience an increase in the number of suppliers and vendors year on year. This complexity added to the strain on Derbyshire Constabulary’s limited IT resources, restricting the team’s ability to focus on strategic initiatives.
The small IT team had to put the ever-growing number of individual projects out to tender, making the process time-consuming and expensive, which in turn made it difficult to deliver best value to either the force or the people of Derbyshire.
As part of a robust tender process, Insight proposed a simplified way to purchase our technology, with clear and predictable pricing. Our previous procurement processes involved too many individual projects with too many suppliers. The whole process had become unruly and inefficient, which was pushing our operational costs much higher.
“Insight delivered savings in all categories of our IT spend and helped secure Cisco equipment for our new building incredibly fast – we went from waiting months to days.”
Kirsty Holding, Procurement Manager, Derbyshire Constabulary
Solution and Outcome
As modern policing involves a number of digital processes, the implementation of Insight’s services had a number of positive outcomes for Derbyshire Constabulary. These include:
✓ A simplified procurement process.
✓ Cost reductions.
✓ Expedited equipment lead times.
✓ Wider Force access.
✓ Access to on demand technical resources.
Using Insight removed Derbyshire Constabulary’s need to tender individual contracts, and gave them a single, unified procurement process. The streamlined route to market enables Derbyshire to purchase regulation-compliant technology in a direct, uncomplicated manner.
It also alleviated the pressure on Derbyshire Constabulary’s IT teams, which allowed for a better allocation of resources and reduced operational expenditure. After the first year of the contract, Insight had delivered circa five per cent of cost savings for the force.
Insight’s police-specific vendor relationships also benefited Derbyshire Constabulary. Support through the pricing negotiations process secured better prices for the hardware and software Derbyshire Constabulary needed. For example, when Cisco equipment was delayed, Insight leveraged its relationships to secure higher-spec equipment, establish a discount, and have it delivered within three days rather than three months.
The simplified procurement process also enabled wider engagement and gave the national Digital Forensics and Fire and Rescue units access to the framework so they too can benefit from the IT cost savings.
Why Insight?
Insight’s dedicated Police Team, provide knowledge, experience, and over 750 public sector vendor relationships helping public sector bodies, like Derbyshire Constabulary, save time, and money, while providing an efficient and cost-effective route to procure technology and services.
Thanks to Insight’s 200 police-specific vendor partnerships, forces like Derbyshire Constabulary can easily transfer purchasing contracts when joining Insight’s framework. What’s more, its relationships allow Insight to deliver best value solutions which are proven in policing.
By using Insight to simplify the procurement process, police forces like Derbyshire Constabulary can alleviate operational pressures and achieve more with often limited budgets.
