County Purchasing: Rapid Cost Reduction
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Client:
Cook County
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Project Description:
With help from Abbott Laboratories, the County is on target to save nearly $30 million in cost reductions in its contract and purchasing functions.
Facing a more than $480 million budget shortfall when she walked in the door, President Preckwinkle knew that getting control of what the County was buying and spending would be a critical piece to the success of her new administration. At the start of the new administration, a team from Abbott began working pro bono with the County’s new purchasing agent to quickly implement a moratorium on discretionary spending, conduct a high level spend analysis of county purchases, and develop a resource and project plan for supporting the several key projects optimizing county purchasing.
Abbott Laboratories is a global pharmaceutical and healthcare company operating in 130 countries worldwide with revenues of more than $36 billion. Having highly developed supply chain and purchasing functions, they agreed to donate two procurement specialists to the County full time for 3 months to help the County assess its purchasing operations.
The Abbott team also helped with office reorganization recommendations—for example, eliminating the "typing pool" and assembly line process. They helped instead create buyer positions and roles that handled the entire process for a procurement contract. They also mapped the present state of the County purchasing process and developed a model future state process which that help move the organization from one that focuses on transaction management to one that is centered around value creation. Purchasing Agent Lourdes Coss said, “The County would never have been able to move so quickly to realizing savings without the help from Abbott.”
Most significantly, the Abbott team helped the County launch an RFP to acquire a sourcing partner for the next 18 months by reviewing language and serving in an advisory role on the selection committee. This contract will enable to help the County obtain additional savings in the 2012 and 2013 budgets.