London Met – follow up

Following up the post from earlier this week on London Metropolitan, I have now seen the relevant tender document.

I can confirm that it is not about outsourcing in the normally understood sense.

The key clause is this:

The University seeks a strategic partner who will work with us in three stages:

(i) to review the existing administrative business processes of the University, deploying proven expertise to maximise performance improvement and transform administrative processing;

(ii) to develop and deliver a shared services partnership to deliver those transformed processes to the University, delivering continuous process improvement and cost-savings for reinvestment;

(iii) subject to confirmation of the business case and the Finance Bill 2012, to develop and deliver a shared services proposition to offer to other higher education providers.

This shared services partnership will be facilitated by recent changes in VAT legislation with regard to shared service units and will take a lead in providing high quality cost-effective services to the higher education sector.

The initial contract will be for five years. The University reserves the right of the option to extend for a further three years pending reviews.

 

London Met is looking for a management consultant initially on a £74million contract for 5 years but the idea is at stage (iii) to create a subsidiary company. This is the ‘special purpose vehicle’ mentioned in the previous post. Note that the Finance Bill received Royal Assent in July.