BeConnected is only 4 years old. It’s still an infant but with a big vision for the future.
If we were to encapsulate this vision into one sentence it would be:
The go-to source and cross-departmental sharing resource for internal UK public sector ideas
Connecting departments and discipline practitioners
BeConnected has been described as a repository of business intelligence for the public sector. Indeed, much of its data cannot be found in any other single source.
It connects departments and disciplines, such as local authority treasury management, and shares this data freely and widely. This pooling of knowledge and expertise, as well as lessons learned through experiences, improves the effectiveness and performance of public sector professionals.
Treasury strategies in local authorities
To take just one example. A treasury management strategy aims to protect the organisation from market-related risks by monitoring and analysing economic indicators, interest rates and government finances both UK and foreign. It also outlines the strategy relating to borrowing, capital finance, investment and interest rates expectations, and highlights risks, uncertainties as well as contingent liabilities.
While there are many commonalities between the strategies of the 800 local authorities, they all face different challenges in catering to their electorate’s needs. When producing their Annual Investment Strategy, they frequently draw on investment advice from external treasury management advisers.
It means there is a wealth of valuable information locked into many strategy documents that is a rich source of alternative ideas. Accounting Officers use BeConnected to draw on this resource and to communicate their own initiatives and experiences to an audience of peers.
In this way, BeConnected supports professional bodies such as CIPFA (Chartered Institute of Public Finance & Accounting). It acts as a hub for information sharing and assists in better treasury management by enabling communication between peers. It can act across all 12 areas of the finance taxonomy.
BeConnected helps to swell the ranks of local authority finance officers who outperform targets set in their organisation’s Annual Investment Strategy and also outstrip many professional fund managers.
Procurement Contract Registers are the keys to unlocking better spend value
BeConnected is a catalyst in the move towards consolidating procurement of categories and sub-categories. As more and more procurement professionals have realised the significance of the contracts renewals information that BeConnected puts at their fingertips, they have leveraged it to stretch their budgets and win better value from suppliers.
They do this primarily through two approaches:
- Finding other organisations to team with (collaborative procurement) for greater buying power
- Benchmarking spend against other organisations of a similar size across the UK
BeConnected’s dedicated support team constantly upload and refresh contract registers and contracts renewal information from about 1,300 organisations. That includes all verticals of government as well as local authorities, education, blue lights etc.
Contract details include contact details of contract owners as well as spend and supplier information. This contact information is the key to enabling communication that eventually results in savings realised.
Finding stuff – superior keyword search is the key
The key to finding what you want is advanced search capability. It’s the mark of a great resource and truly useful and ensures it gets used almost by default.
Users select the type of resource they wish to locate, such as Treasury Management Strategy documents or ICT Strategy Plans. Then they enter the required keywords and BeConnected’s search engine returns the most appropriate list of documents.
Further reading
You can see how BeConnected already helps public sector ICT managers:
>> IT Managers, BeConnected Boosts Your Capability Too!
>> How To Draft The Best IT Strategy In The Public Sector
Or go straight to the BeConnected page.
