Be Connected Data Analysis – Telephone Maintenance for UK public sector procurement

A service such as Telephone Maintenance requires physical attendance capability in a supplier. That represents an opportunity for local SMEs to compete with the national companies where a regional public sector procurement group opens a tender for competition.

The primary objective of using Be Connected is to save money and stretch budgets further.

That could possibly be achieved through the CSS procurement aggregation service. However, some organisations prefer an independent approach. Collaborating with others that have the same manufacturer’s equipment installed reaps dividends for better services.

Data analysis – Telephone Maintenance for UK public sector procurement

This short article looks at just some of the rich information on offer in CSPG’s UK public sector procurement category datasets. It’s the first of a series that explores a sample of the many category datasets that CSPG’s Be Connected tool slices and dices.

Insights into public sector spend on Telephone Maintenance

Where do you start when seeking out opportunities to save on your budget?

It helps to get a feel for the size of the market for this procurement category. Find out how much the public sector spends on telephone maintenance. Be Connected has details of all contracts with suppliers.

Market penetration under the spotlight

We have selected these views for our initial visit to the value of the datasets. By “market” we mean total UK public sector annual spend on a category.

All numbers relate to anticipated renewals spend between Jan-Jun 2020.

#1 The size of the Telephone Maintenance UK public sector market

This graphic illustrates UK public sector fixed term contracts for telephone maintenance.

. .and this shows the same period and scope for rolling contracts:

So you can see that the total is about 350 contracts with an annual spend of around £24m.

Interestingly, the South-East region tops Greater London for rolling contracts even though the spend is considerably smaller. We can take a closer look at that. But first . .

#2 How the regions compare for Telephone Maintenance spend

Looking only at fixed term contracts as an example –

Greater London dominates and the South East again shows a high contracts count with a relatively small spend by comparison. The others are interesting too.

#3 Telephone system brands penetration in the UK public sector

The immediate message is that Cisco dominates in terms of installations but Siemens has a much higher revenue from a smaller count of contracts.

#4 Telephone Maintenance suppliers to the UK public sector by market share

While these numbers are indicative and not empirical across the service, they do indicate the spread of business and the main players.

What you want to see in a good telephone maintenance supplier

Look for suppliers with these characteristics and good telephone maintenance contract cover:

Offers the benefits of customised and competitive pricing
Includes all parts and labour (except fair wear and tear)
No call-out charge. It should be included in the service level agreement (SLA).
Ensure response time SLAs for call-out and for completing repairs are satisfactory
Response times should be prioritised by fault severity and categorised by fault type:
- typically within 4 hours for a high-impact issue such as unable to make or receive calls, faulty extensions and so on
- within 16 hours for a lower category fault such as crackling on the line
Work carried out to ISO 9001 quality standards
Engineers who are manufacturer trained
Company certified by the Contractors Health and Safety Assessment Scheme (CHAS) to ensure it meets H&S standards required by all public sector organisations
Ideally also capable of providing one-stop communications, data, mobile, lines, calls, broadband and business mobiles. Even better if the supplier offers a comprehensive disaster recovery program in the event of fire, flooding etc.