The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic was felt by businesses across the globe. British Council was not immune to this impact and had to reduce costs, streamline processes, use more digital tools, and introduce much greater standardisation. A key lever being explored for this transformation was to partner with a third-party company with expertise in these areas to deliver some aspects of professional services. Four key global professional services functions (including their corresponding operations delivered from the shared service centre in India) were identified for this. These included the Human Resources (HR), Finance, Procurement and Digital and Technology (IT) services. Competitive dialogue route to procurement was followed to reach to a final selected bidder.

The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic was felt by businesses across the globe. The British Council was not immune to this impact and had to streamline processes, use more digital tools and introduce greater standardisation to be more efficient and effective. The British Council’s Strategy 2025 lays out these desired goals for the organisation by the year 2025. To enable this change, a Global Transformation Programme (GTP) is constituted which is touching all areas of the organisation in some shape or form. Professional Services (PS)Transformation is one of the workstreams within the Global Transformation Programme (GTP) and is a key enabler of this change for the organisation. The corporate functions of Finance, Human Resources, Digital and Technology (D&T), Procurement, Marketing and Estates are within the scope of the PS Transformation programme (others may be added subsequently). A key lever being explored for this transformation was to partner with a third-party company with expertise in these areas to deliver some aspects of professional services. Four key global professional services functions (including their corresponding operations delivered from the shared service centre in India) were identified for this exercise, namely Human Resources (HR), Finance, Procurement, Digital and Technology (D&T). A two-stage Competitive Dialogue route to procurement was followed wherein all interested suppliers had to must complete a Supplier Questionnaire (SQ). A shortlist of successful pre-qualified suppliers were invited for a dialogue and subsequently to submit Initial Tenders. These were negotiated and on conclusion final tenders were requested from the bidders. Tenders were evaluated and a successful supplier was selected to proceed to Contract Award.