Towards combining procurement power

Just under a year and a half ago, us at Hansel were given a new challenge when our clientele expanded following the change of our ownership base which brought the entire public administration as our customer. Previously, we had been the joint procurement body of the Finnish government, but it was time to take on a new vision of combining Finland’s public procurement power.

It is important to break larger challenges down into smaller pieces, and for us this meant tackling the matter “one tender at a time”. We rolled up our sleeves and quickly launched a series of tendering through which we were able to offer joint procurement in a tight schedule also for our new customers. At the end of the year, there were already 29 joint procurement projects offered for the entire clientele, and there will be many more during the spring.

We started seeking customers’ commitment to frame agreements in the manner required by legal practice, and we succeeded nicely. We also provided dynamic purchasing systems that require no advance accession – a customer can join at any time during the agreement’s validity.

We could say that the numbers speak for themselves, and we managed to gather quite a number of accessions in advance. When the strategy’s first mid-term review was current in autumn 2020, we noted that we had gained new accessions of EUR 2.8 billion in worth. Of these, 1.6 billion came from “old” clientele and the rest, 1.2 billion, from municipalities, other municipal organisations, and parishes. We must also mention that these purchases will spread across many years, as some of the framework agreements are valid even until 2029.

The actual procurement volume from realised sales accumulates slower, and this was further slowed down by the coronavirus pandemic. However, we also gained new customer organisations in all business activities, and even though the sales of joint procurement are slightly below target due to COVID-19, the volume of nearly EUR 920 million is a good achievement.