Tail spend purchases are often not visible until it appears in an organisation’s end of year accounts and can cause significant budget pressures if not controlled. These purchases are usually made by members of staff outside of an organisation’s more formal procurement practices. An organisations ‘tail’ is also known as the 20% of spend that typically goes unmanaged within an organisation.
Examples of tail spend can include:
- schools buying stationery for a specific, short term need
- a local authority buying camera equipment and accessories that they are unlikely to buy again or in the near future
This agreement will give your organisation the ability to control your tail spend by providing you with an end-to-end management service. This includes:
- the digital buying platform (which allows you to filter by social value criteria such as vendor SME status and provides the ability to include permissions into the customers approval process)
- managing the supply chain of tail spend products from procurement to payment
- logistics: such as storing and distributing products
- buyer registrations for your organisation
- support and management information to help you report on spend
There are two suppliers on this agreement, Unite (Mercateo UK limited) and OT Group limited. Each supplier has their own buying platform which will provide you with a digital solution for controlling your tail spend.
Both platforms provide:
- a simple user experience that is compliant with government buying standards
- an extensive range of products
- a dynamic and pre-qualified supply base which will change with market demands
As part of the buying platform, you can decide what level of approval a buyer in your organisation has. You have the option to set permissions and organise your user accounts by category or product and through personalised approval levels. You can change the features of your user accounts based on criteria such as:
- availability of product categories
- availability of specific products
- approval levels
- spend limits
- area of business
- multiple delivery points
- job title or grade of staff members
- social value initiatives, for example: SME vendors, Carbon Net Zero and buying local
All public sector organisations can use this agreement and it has a maximum contract length of 4 years, plus the period of your implementation where appropriate.
For more information about this process, you should read the customer guide.