Tactics win battles – strategies win the war. Countries that copied China’s strategy to combat the COVID-19 coronavirus achieved the best outcomes for controlling the disease. Alexander the Great excelled at military strategy and many commanders successfully copied his methods, and still do to this day.
The point is that watching what works for others either gives you a proven successful approach to adopt or triggers great ideas that work for you. Whether you are drafting a career strategy, building a business model or putting together an IT strategy, the principle remains the same.
BeConnected is a procurement tool – what has it got to do with IT strategy?
BeConnected was devised as a very valuable tool to enable public sector procurement officers to save money and stretch their budgets. It is the only single source of contracts entered into with suppliers by over 1,300 public sector organisations across the breadth of the UK.
Procurement people, and other public sector managers, can access all of this information. It enables them to benchmark spend by comparing other organisations of a similar size. They can find out who the better suppliers and brands are.
Critically, it identifies the owners of each contract. That represents a contact point to find out more and discuss their experience of a particular procurement category, such as Mobile, Broadband and IT network devices to mention just three.
What type of information does BeConnected offer to public sector subscribers?
The range of information held in BeConnected is widening all the time. Right now it includes:
Dashboard – Shows details of your own organisation and relevant news feeds
Contracts – Find details of supplier contracts and contact details of their owners
Search – Helps to drill down to find the details of the category you are interest in
Frameworks – Find all the information you need about every CCS procurement framework
Documents – This is the repository of every document uploaded to the system
Suppliers – A wealth of information about what every supplier delivers and into which organisations
There is a lot more useful information than just procurement contracts
Our staff engage in a continuous cycle of locating and uploading relevant and current documentation that can be accessed by all subscribers.
Those that are relevant to ICT people are likely to be:
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- IT Strategy documents
- IT Financial plans
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What can I find in these IT Strategy documents?
Every organisation prioritises different initiatives depending on the service they provide and the space they deliver into.
For example, here is an excerpt from a higher education organisation’s high level outline:
The overall cloud strategy is illustrated in this graphic:
Your next steps
Try it and see for yourself. Take a free 3-month test drive. Contact our Director of Projects, Vimal Bhikha vimal@thepublicpurse.org.uk to get your access credentials.
See related article: IT Managers, BeConnected Boosts Your Capability Too!
