Cost-effective delivery

Whilst cost-effective delivery in the public sector is not a new concept, making the best use of resources and paving the way for long-term efficiency improvements are major challenges that local and central government are addressing.

PricewaterhouseCoopers works with clients in the following ways to improve cost-effective delivery:

• Consumer strategies - understanding service provision from the perspective of citizens or consumers, and adapting the service, often radically, to improve outcomes, and/or reduce expenditure, for example in relationship breakdown, domestic violence and debt
• Performance management frameworks - developing frameworks which incentivise efficiency improvement, for example, through retention of savings, performance scoring and learning engines
• Balanced scorecards - to hardwire strategy and objectives to front-line tasks and performance, align processes and produce coherent organisation
• Process improvement - process redesign, preferably undertaken collaboratively with the managers and staff affected, and implemented by them, for example, in housing benefit payments, motoring offences and correspondence
• Agency/NDPB (non-departmental body) governance - holding Boards to account in appropriate and effective ways
• Corporate service performance - benchmarking services (finance, HR, IT, procurement, legal), and preparing and implementing performance improvement plans
• Shared services - assessing their real potential, securing internal support, managing their implementation
• Intervention - intervening in failing operations to turn them around
• Cost reduction - using participatory approaches to prioritising, agreeing and implementing cost savings
• HR policy and practice - rebalancing employee-centric terms and conditions, using pay as a performance lever, advising on effective performance management
• Procurement - analysing and managing markets; identifying potential for efficiency through bulk purchasing, negotiating, establishing centres of excellence and recovering discounts and debts.