The third area concerns IT again. We have a number of Business Units within The Post Office and they have internal customer/supplier relationships with each other. And in fact, those supplier/customer relationships are just as robust as one would find in the external market. Supplier units must achieve or better external market benchmark performance, and internal customers are very demanding.
IT is a classic area where we need to have a partnership because the knowledge requirements are so great that Business Units cannot hope to track efficiently all of the changes and opportunities as they develop.
So we put in place an internal partnership with each of the Business Units for IT procurement. Each party clearly defined what they required. Key Performance Indicators were specified so everybody knew what was being achieved. This facilitated open discussion and sharing of plans and through these activities we have driven 11-12 per cent cost reduction across The Post Office on IT spend. For an organisation our size, that kind of saving is well worth having.
The partnership delivered real benefits. After all this is the reason why you have the partnership in the first place!
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