Auditing contracts, outsourcing and procurement

Presented by Mindgrove

In the news, you see organisations being criticised for their mediocre performance in the handling of contractors. When your organisation decides to outsource activities or infrastructure, uncertainties over delivery, cost and quality become a key threat.

This course highlights best practice and steers you through the audit of contracting, outsourcing or procurement activities.

Who should attend?

• Open to all – the course has a major focus on contract and outsourcing management practices and a minor focus on procurement and tendering processes.
• This course lends itself to a collaborative and interactive style, therefore numbers will be restricted to five.

What will I learn?

Upon completion you will be able to:

• appreciate how putting the right contract in place helps avoid future pitfalls when you work with contractors
• understand and use best-practice knowledge for checking outsourcing operations
• understand the weak points that cause outsourcing and contracting to end up as contentious issues.

Course programme

Creating the right contract – what should I look at?

• due diligence – is this only about money?
• duration of contracts – long or short which is best?
• assets, warranties, and survivorship – matters beyond the contract?
• main contractors and sub-contractors – the supply chain
• invoicing, payments, and performance
• Contract and relationship management.

Contract lifecycle management – what does good look like?

• the contract and outsourcing life cycle
• strategy decisions, the business case and analysis of the requirement
• key preparations before tendering or negotiation begins
• going to the market with a sound case
• striking the deal
• transitioning to new arrangements
• day-to-day management of the contract
• end of contract.

Auditing newly struck outsourcing or supply contracts

• is there a proper framework for contract and relationship management?
• are our staff trained and understand their role?
• what are the key matters that need to be understood by our team?
• what are the areas that cause difficulty – teething problems?
• what about communications between both sides?
• what about invoicing, performance tracking and payment?
• is there an effective way of setting up performance indicators?
• can performance monitoring be counterproductive?
• what about risk management – are our risk registers complete?
• what if we want to stop the contract because of underperformance?

Auditing mid-maturity outsourcing or supply contracts

• is contract and relationship management working?
• is the right business outcome being delivered?
• is incentivisation working?
• does the contract measure up to expectations?
• can more be obtained from the contract?
• are we still communicating?
• what if one party wants to exit the contract?

Auditing end-of-life outsourcing or supply contracts

• was the business case delivered?
• was the contract good value-for-money?
• what did we learn from the contract?
• should we extend, in-source or re-tender?
• exit strategies – what are our options?

Auditing procurement processes – the approach

• management and the procurement process
• aontrols over procurement
• tendering processes
• on-going due diligence
• evaluation of value delivered.

CPE competency areas covered

• Environment (Common business processes)

14 CPE points