Arden & GEM has successfully achieved accreditation in the Commercial Continuous Improvement Assessment Framework (CCIAF).
The CCIAF is designed to help drive continuous improvement in commercial practices across the Government Commercial Function (GCF) and wider public sector by enabling organisations to benchmark their commercial operations against good practice. Arden & GEM is pleased to announce a categorisation of ‘good’ in recognition of its clear commercial strategy and policy which are aligned with organisational objectives.
Arden & GEM is one of a handful of NHS organisations that have become early adopters of the framework to demonstrate their credible and robust processes for commercial and procurement practice.
As part of the accreditation process, Arden & GEM was required to self-assess its performance as ‘in development’, ‘good’, ‘better’ or ‘best’ against the following eight themes:
- Commercial strategy, planning and governance
- Commercial capability and resourcing
- Commercial lifecycle define: pre-procurement
- Commercial lifecycle procure: procurement and contracting
- Commercial lifecycle manage: contract management
- Managing categories, markets, supplier relationships and working with partners
- Commercial systems, reporting and information
- Policy.
Following a peer review process, the self-assessment was evaluated by the Cabinet Office who acknowledged the CSU’s commercial pipeline and capability to drive consistency in the planning and management of buying goods, works and services.
“As part of the NHS, we are committed to demonstrating a strong commercial and governance management framework that realises value for money and results in the delivery of high quality public services. We are delighted to have been categorised as ‘good’ during this assessment cycle; an achievement that was a fantastic team effort within a very tight timescale. Our ambition now is to move towards the next category rating of ‘better’ by embracing a continuous improvement methodology.”
Jason Bloomfield, Chief Operating Officer at NHS Arden & GEM
The next stage in Arden & GEM’s continuous improvement cycle is to develop action plans within the commercial and procurement directorates which will realise realistic organisational growth. CCIAF accredited organisations also form part of a network to share commercial insights, common challenges and lessons learned.