ANZ Government Procurement: Challenges and response to COVID-19!
While Government and commercial procurement teams follow a similar approach when it comes to their procurement process, Government procurement is distinct from commercial as the focus is primarily on:
- Transparency
- Community
- Jobs
- Optimizing taxpayers money
- Reaction to change
As a response to the disruptions caused by COVID-19, businesses are primarily looking at cost-saving measures, driven by market and shareholder accountability.
The government’s first reaction is to ensure that there’s continuity of supply, and minimum job losses. The community is the major shareholder for the Government, and ensuring services are made available to the people is their primary objective.
However, most Government departments and agencies are dependent on third-party vendors who handle a majority of the services being run by the Government, and it is these third party vendors who are facing the brunt of pandemic.
Unfortunately, unlike businesses, Governments do not regularly test and modify their business continuity plans around critical supplies and follow a reactionary approach. This is also driven by their dependence on third-party vendors.
Amidst all the doom and gloom, digital procurement has provided a ray of hope with its ease of use, aiding users to make necessary changes to the workflow-without support from a third party-and enabling procurement teams to continue their day to day tasks from the safety of their homes.
To know more about Government’s response to COVID-19 and about digital procurement, we caught up with Phil Chalkley-a procurement veteran- in an exclusive podcast.
