About the organisation

Independent Age provides older people, their families and carers with clear, free and impartial advice on issues that matter: health and care, money and benefits, social health and wellbeing.

They also provide wellbeing services which help build social connections and reduce loneliness – an area in which they are now developing new services and thinking; and based on the evidence of their frontline services and research with older people they campaign on the issues that matter to them.

Independent Age’s 3-year strategy focuses upon ensuring they use their resources strategically and effectively and on diversifying and growing their funding base so that they build a strong sustainable charity.

One of their key strategic objectives includes; “We will set ambitious but achievable annual plans and budgets which will focus on delivering impact on the ground and achieving value for money with every pound we spend”

What help did they require?

Independent Age approached Novo-K to respond to a competitive tender. They were seeking an organisation to develop a complete procurement approach encompassing process, systems, training, and post procurement contract management.

They were looking for support to develop a process, policies and procedures, supplier management and control tools and an easily accessibility of tools and guidance for their people, who are dispersed across the country.

What did we deliver?

Novo-K were successful in winning the tender. Our vision was to help Independent Age gain clarity over their expenditure, control over their costs and suppliers, so they can provide confidence to their Board of Trustees and Donors that money is spent in the right way.

Our proposal focused on using our deep knowledge and experience of the charity sector to support Independent Age’s ambition to implement a best practice, self-service procurement function.

Through the implementation of our SMARTsetup product we provided staff with the tools, training and support to procure suppliers or purchase goods and services on behalf of Independent Age (IA).

The project included;

• A centralised portal for all their buying activity, procurement governance, in-life supplier management, risk management and procurement tools
• We assisted with writing their procurement policy and strategy to align with their ethics, values and organisational strategy
• We worked with the team to determine their supplier minimum requirements to build a sustainable and compliant supplier base
• We tailored their procurement process to align with their delegation of authority, and financial process to onboard a new suppliers
• We delivered training workshops and drop in sessions for employees and stakeholders across the organisation

“Kavita and the team very ably led us through the setup, implementation and training for the complete Sourcing2Supervision^TM procurement process. We are grateful for their guidance, patience and responsiveness to feedback in equal measure! Thankyou.“