FirstGroup plc is a leading private sector provider of public transport services. With £4.59 billion in revenue and around 30,000 employees, its UK divisions transport nearly 700,000 passengers per day.

Optimise visibility of day-to-day projects, savings and contract management

As Director of Procurement for FirstGroup, Nicola Molloy is responsible for coordinating the organisation’s diverse and disparate procurement functions across the Bus and Rail Divisions. With 30,000 employees spread across UK, managing an annual spend of over £3bn with 1,000s of different suppliers can be demanding. Each bus or rail operator has its own set of sometimes rather distinct requirements which means that efficient allocation of procurement resources is critical. The challenge is to serve the needs of all these business units in terms of cost, quality and delivery, while maximising the commercial value for the group overall.

FirstGroup previously had to manage disparate operations, tools, spreadsheets, and practices while trying to find new ways to generate savings due to cost pressures elsewhere. They were also motivated by figuring out how they could get people to work together to identify savings opportunities, track contract compliance and better measure procurement performance. For example, they wanted to know where they were using the same supplier and how they could get a better deal in these circumstances.

The team were using spreadsheets in different formats even though they had e-procurement systems in place. The gap was evident and the need to demonstrate procurement value to Finance and other stakeholders led the organisation to search for a better tool.

“When we were trying to track spend, measuring savings was very difficult. Historically, Finance didn’t view our numbers as reliable, particularly our savings projections for the next year,” said Nicola Molloy, Director of Procurement, FirstGroup.

Powerful Technology to demonstrate Procurement’s value and share a single version of the truth

By using SpendHQ Procurement Performance Management, they can get a real-time view of project status in both the entities and the central team, along with a balanced view of strategic and tactical projects. The team has visibility of all procurement projects and contracts centrally, and by entity. They can report meaningful data to key stakeholders easily. One of the benefits has been improved collaboration with FirstGroup’s Legal team.

“It has helped to facilitate more robust conversations between procurement, finance, and legal,” said Nicola Molloy.

Added Tom Jolly, Procurement Manager Governance and Capability: “It allows us to measure not only our savings performance, but helps to provide valuable insights on contract compliance as well as the ability to add new fields to meet emerging requirements and instantly connect these up to our fully bespoke reports.”

Editor’s note: SpendHQ’s procurement performance management solution used by this customer was originally named Per Angusta, with the renaming following Per Angusta’s merger with SpendHQ in July 2022.