Articles

• Press Releases
• Thought Leadership
• Case Studies

Press Releases  

Sustainability through better procurement

Civil servants seeking more sustainable approaches to IT should turn to Best Practice Best Value e-procurement solutions for a more equitable future.

From Gershon to Green IT to Transformational Government, Whitehall’s procurement and IT professionals are facing many evolving challenges.

No longer is their job confined to matching private sector best practice. Today they must also help deliver streamlined and sustainable IT solutions that will both increase efficiency and enhance the delivery of frontline public services. Entrepreneur Peter Robbins, Managing Director of Probrand, says that by reducing duplication and routine processing, efficiencies will automatically follow. “This can then increase delivery capacity and streamline processes,” he says.

Serving a wide range of public sector customers across the UK, Probrand is a major supplier of top branded computer products – anything from a floppy disk to a fully implemented network – and is ideally placed to help civil servants save time whilst meeting their green IT objectives. “We work with the top UK distributors of IT by aggregating and anglicizing their data to show the best price and stock availability,” explains Robbins. The www.theitindex.co.uk/gov store is an e-procurement solution for public sector purchasers and users can be assured of at least three quotes per product; the current UK best value deal, a CATALIST framework price and a best private sector price. This empowers users to make an intuitive purchasing choice through a best practice process for best value IT.

The www.theitindex.co.uk/gov service demonstrates how Proband is fully focused on helping civil servants maximize efficiency and, in so doing, meet their green targets, adds Stephen Bushell, Director of Marketing, “Green IT is about efficiency and sustainability, more specifically for us that is e-procurement – getting people to the best products in the shortest possible time,” he says. “We do that through our www.theitindex.co.uk. This is a website showing over 100,000 branded product lines from 1,200 suppliers by best price and availability. For IT buyers this means they can see the best priced product available in the shortest possible time. As a result it saves them time and money when buying IT, eliminating the need to phone round and manually compare supplier prices and availability.” Additionally, this type of best practice approach is helping to speed up product transactions and get greener product to market faster. Great news for manufacturers and end users alike. The faster end users adopt newer, more efficient IT solutions so the more sustainable their practices.

Probrand’s public sector customers stretch from police forces to NHS Trust Hospitals, schools and local authorities and this helps explain its success in securing a Best Practice Best Value accreditation for the IT Index from The Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW). No other procurement solution in the world has such an accolade but the ICAEW recognised it as a European benchmark for delivering consistent time and fiscal savings.

The service recently helped Bradford Grammar School save 30 per cent on its IT budget and nearly two working weeks a month in man hours as a result of massive increases in operating efficiency and purchasing processes. The school is able to buy more for the same budget, which is enhancing the learning environment and pace of technology education in the classroom.

As a result, the school is smashing DCFS targets for PC: Pupil ratios and buying higher specification equipment for the same budget.

This type of Best Practice e-procurement solution supports Green manufacturers like Lenovo in their delivery of green IT products to the end user.

The Lenovo ThinkCentre A61e computer is made from up to 90 per cent re-usable and recyclable materials and its packaging is 90 per cent recyclable. Lenovo energy efficient PCs also help reduce energy consumption and electricity costs.

Hewlett-Packard, too, is also leading the way in providing innovative Green IT solutions. HP’s ProCurve networking solution, based on its low consumption, efficient design.

Brother has won over many environmentally led customers and has launched its Print Smarter Charter – an initiative to help businesses use their printer technology to work quicker, greener and smarter.

However, manufacturers are often frustrated by the lack of understanding in the marketplace about their products and this is where Probrand sees its role as an aggregator of information as a key element of its best practice function; educating, informing and delivering information about products into the marketplace.

In response to market demand for Green awareness, Probrand has launched an e-portal called www.destinationgreenit.com that specifically helps manufacturers to communicate their Green priorities to the end user market place. “Our aim is to empower the market with an information resource pool to plot a path towards greener IT, bringing together a network of end users, manufacturers, suppliers and distributors to facilitate the Green movement towards more efficient and sustainable practices,” says Robbins.

Probrand is also an OGCbuying.solutions’ catalist accredited supplier. “Probrand is one of only six suppliers in the whole of Europe to win reseller framework Lot 1 status and it underwent rigorous inspection and technical auditing before being fully approved and accepted onto the list,” explains Bushell. “We are a small company compared to our competitors but we received this status because of our solutions and our technical capability.”

Probrand is also approved as a level one supplier to the Cabinet Office’s Government Gateway Alliance Programme. The Government Gateways Alliance Programme (GGAP) is part of the Cabinet Office’s E-Delivery Team’s ongoing commitment to work in partnership with key IT suppliers in delivering the Government Gateway and related services across the public sector and is a key initiative stemming from John Suffolk and the Chief Information Officers Council.

By harnessing the greater appetite for green IT and the ever increasing need for efficiencies and IT enabled change, Probrand is clearly a company on the move. “User friendly Best Practice Best Value solutions are now more accessible to civil servants than ever before,” says Robbins. “We offer the public sector the complete solution.”

Useful websites
www.destinationgreenit.com
www.theitindex.co.uk/gov

For further details please contact:
steve.bushell@probrand.co.uk