Hybrid mail and digital mailroom: helping you save on your mail

With organisations looking to switch to smarter ways of working, find out if moving to hybrid mail or a digital mailroom solution could work for you.

What is hybrid mail and digital mailroom?

Hybrid mail can cater for large mailing volumes or a single letter to a recipient with the click of a mouse. Hybrid mail opens up opportunities for significant mail discounts, because a supplier can consolidate your output with those of other mailers.

It is the ability to produce your mail at another location like a mail factory where outbound correspondence is routed from anywhere in your organisation to be printed and mailed, or even bulk emails and SMS messages. This reduces the reliance on franking machines or folder inserters and capital expenditure business cases.

The digital mailroom looks after your incoming physical mail. It is scanned and converted into a digital format for routing to teams or individuals.  This solution means that staff can access inbound mail from their desktop, from any location, rather than having to wait for physical mail to be distributed.

The benefits of using hybrid mail

There are many benefits to your organisation of using this approach:

• savings on floor space, storage and consumables

• no capital expenditure required

• flexible solutions that can adapt to your outbound and inbound volumes

• savings on postage, access volume related discounts and pre-sort discounts

• access to latest IT technology

• email and SMS capability to communicate effectively with your end users

• easy to use with a full audit trail allowing you to track and manage what is sent

• reduction in carbon footprint with less deliveries and collections

• can be accessed whether resources are working from home or in the office

Supporting Government’s Smarter Working Strategy

Our Hybrid Mail solutions enable all the advantages of being in the office, whilst supporting Smarter Working, and provide you with a full audit trail of your mail from creation to print and with a Mailmark discount and tracking to Royal Mail handover. You have full control over the postage class, whether this be first or second class.

It allows you to communicate with your customers in a way that ensures you get the best outcome, whilst delivering efficiencies and savings.

If you struggled getting your mail during the recent pandemic lockdowns, then our digital mailroom solutions provide you with an option to have physical mail scanned and delivered to your computer or your team. Digital copies take up a lot less space and can be shared with those who need it with a full audit trail.

Our Digital Mailroom solution supports the Government’s Smarter Working Strategy by:

•   open, scan and transmit digitally to teams or individuals

•   receiving mail for multiple addresses

•   scanning all types of documents

•   creating digital records

•   reducing carbon footprint

•   creating savings similar to outbound hybrid

Old red mailbox on a laptop keyboard

Can we help you? Get in touch

Our Postal Goods, Services and Solutions framework agreement (RM6017) caters for scanning of inbound and outbound mail. To find out how we can help you, visit our webpage or get in touch with our category experts today.

Cycle to work: help your employees saddle up and save

Now more than ever, employers recognise that employee wellbeing is key to how well their organisations perform.

Cycle to work schemes, which are available through our Employee Benefits framework, have always played a valuable role in encouraging fitness. In the wake of a pandemic, helping your employees get into bike commuting and avoid crowded public transport is a real benefit, as reflected by the recent cycling boom. During the first lockdown alone, bike sales went up a whopping 63%.

The pandemic has made people rethink their work life balance, confront their fitness levels and change their routine and habits accordingly. Now is the time to think about implementing a cycle to work scheme if you haven’t got one already. It pays to plan before you put your scheme in place, so we’ve summarised everything you need to consider to set up a successful scheme.

How it works

Any employer of any size can get a cycle to work scheme up and running. Not only is it a highly valued employee benefit, but it is better than cost neutral – creating employer National Insurance savings for your organisation too.

Here’s how a cycle to work scheme works:

  • employers choose a scheme provider with an HMRC compliant scheme
  • promote your scheme to employees
  • employees choose their bike and/or safety equipment up to the maximum value allowed by their employer. Within the public sector, this is typically between £2,500 to £4,000
  • employees sign a hire agreement, with payment coming out of their gross monthly salary – that means they can save up to 42% on the cost through income Tax and National Insurance savings that would otherwise be due. Employers make a saving on employer NI on the amount of salary sacrificed
  • the bike and/or safety equipment can either be delivered to or collected by the employee
  • at the end of the loan period the employer either transfers ownership of the bike to the employee or the employee can buy the equipment, according to HMRC guidelines

Pick the right partner

Cycle to work schemes allow employees to buy a new bike and associated equipment without all the upfront costs and with the benefit of doing so out of their pay before tax and national insurance.

Any bike purchases need to comply with HMRC rules so it pays to work with a specialist scheme provider who can help you with this and make sure the administration runs smoothly.

When you are choosing your provider you need to consider:

  • do they have access to cycle retailers who offer a good range of equipment in the right geographical area for your organisation?
  • do they have experience in helping organisations of your size and in your sector?
  • what they can do to help you promote your scheme to your employees?

Make cycling attractive

If you want to maximise the number of people who cycle to work, it’s important to make this an attractive option for their commute. It is here that small investments can make a big difference to uptake.

Options include:

  • a dedicated area with good lighting where bikes can be stored safely (preferably under cover) will reassure employees that their bike won’t be stolen or damaged
  • changing facilities and lockers to allow people to change and store wet or damp clothing post-commute – the addition of shower cubicles also make a big difference
  • depending on how many people cycle to work, you may want to source someone who can come on site to help with running repairs

Inspire participation

Your support for cycling to work will help promote bike commuting to existing employees and new ones when they join. Good ways of doing this include cycle to work days or weeks which get more people in the habit, particularly in the summer where bike commuting is more attractive.

You can also use incentives and reward not just for seasoned cyclists but for novices, evangelists and everything in between, to reduce the number of people travelling by car to work or public transport. Training and buddy schemes can help new cyclists build confidence.

Consider flexible start and finish times which allow staff to cycle when the roads are quieter and fit in with childcare arrangements.

Find out more

The cycle to work benefit is available through our Employee Benefits framework. To find out more, you can visit the agreement page.

Don’t forget, you can find a full list of all the commercial agreements we offer, alongside details of how we can help you build policy considerations into your procurement, in our interactive digital brochure.

Why use National Cyber Security Centre assured services to tackle new cyber security challenges?

Increased home working is likely to become more commonplace, even as restrictions lift. This means there are new cyber security challenges to manage, and new technology to be implemented securely. There has also been an increase in the likelihood and impact of cyber attacks during the pandemic, with rises in attacks such as phishing, malware and denial of service (DoS).

To help you manage these new challenges and threats, it’s important you choose the right service provider.

What is the NCSC?

The NCSC is the UK’s National Technical Authority for cyber security incidents. It was formed in 2016, bringing together expertise from the National Technical Authority for Information Assurance (CESG), the Centre for Cyber Assessment, the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-UK) and the Centre for Protection of the National Infrastructure to provide a unified national response to cyber threats.

The government’s approach to tackling and managing cyber threats is outlined in the National Cyber Security Strategy 2016-2021.

What are NCSC assured service providers?

By using services offered by NCSC assured suppliers, you can be confident that they meet the National Technical Authority’s standard for high quality.

The NCSC offers assurance for a range of services including consultancy, incident response and penetration testing.

Consultancy services

Certified cyber security consultancy can give you independent, expert advice on a wide and complex range of issues.

NCSC assured consultancy companies can offer the following services:

  • audit and review
  • risk assessment
  • risk management
  • security architecture

Incident response

Assured cyber incident response providers help organisations that have been the victim of a cyber attack. This includes understanding the incident, advising how to put steps in place to help protect against attacks in the future, and working with regulators, lawyers, law enforcement and board members, if required.

Penetration testing (CHECK)

CHECK is the term for the NCSC approved penetration testing providers and the methodology used to conduct a penetration test. Companies providing CHECK services use staff who hold NCSC approved qualifications and have suitable experience. Penetration tests are an authorised test of a computer network or system designed to look for security weaknesses. The report and recommendations are produced to a recognised standard.

CHECK was developed for the public sector and organisations forming the UK’s critical national infrastructure (CNI).

What are the benefits of using NCSC assured service providers?

NCSC assured service providers have:

  • met the NCSC’s standards and can be trusted to act in NCSC’s name
  • a proven track record in delivering high quality consultancy services s
  • a defined process for working with customers to understand their needs and tailor advice accordingly
  • demonstrated a clear understanding of current and potential cyber threats and techniques and potential effective mitigations
  • been independently and rigorously assessed
  • shown that they act with integrity objectivity and proportionality
  • protect the customer’s confidentiality and integrity and comply with relevant laws and regulations
  • a commitment to continuously improve the services offered to meet the evolving needs of customers

How can you buy NCSC assured services?

We worked in partnership with NCSC to develop the Cyber Security Services 3 dynamic purchasing system (DPS). It provides a central route to buy NCSC assured services to help you manage and improve your security function.

The DPS allows you to filter for NCSC assured services, choosing the services and supplier accreditations you need. You can also access suppliers who are not NCSC assured and hold alternative cyber security credentials.

Do you have a cyber security requirement? For more information about Cyber Security Services 3, you can:

Chatbots and virtual assistants for local authorities

Chatbots and virtual assistants for local authorities

Are you considering implementing artificial intelligence chatbots or virtual assistants over the next 12-18 months? If so, join our national further competition and we will help you get best value through the economies of scale of aggregation.

We are planning an aggregated further competition for local authorities using our Artificial Intelligence (AI) framework (RM6200). Chatbots and virtual assistants are increasingly being used on platforms, such as council websites, telephone systems, text messaging and mobile apps, to support customers with:

  • finding online services
  • improved accessibility of online services by providing text (chatbot) and voice (virtual assistant) services
  • automated enquiry responses for services such as bins and recycling, parking, council tax, planning and housing

Benefits

Your authority will benefit from:

  • cost and efficiency savings
  • consistent public service platforms available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year 
  • increased first contact resolution
  • better customer experience 
  • reduction in call volumes and associated costs
  • potential to integrate with other service areas seamlessly 
  • an upskilled citizen-centric workforce as employees are released from simple repetitive tasks 
  • increased capacity within your workforce without increasing headcount 
  • comprehensive reporting and analytics to track usage and performance

Take part

If you are interested in taking part and would like to find out more please join our webinar on Wednesday August 11 at 3pm. We’ll share our plans and gather your feedback. Book your place today.

If you can’t attend the webinar, please fill out the short online form  quoting ‘council chatbots’ and we will get in touch to discuss your needs

Helping our customers say thank you with Print Marketplace

Print Marketplace is a UK-wide digital tool for buying printed material including brochures, flyers, leaflets, business cards, and letterheads.

It’s a self-serve platform which is free to use. In a few simple steps you can define your needs and decide which design option is best for you:

  • choose from a range of preloaded templates and easily upload your artwork
  • customise your design using the free and simple to use online design tool
  • use our team of designers – whether you need new concepts or tweaks to existing artwork
  • receive instant quotes and filter by price, location, or carbon impact

How our customers are using Print Marketplace

We have been helping our customers say thank you to some of their most important stakeholders.

HM Land Registry

HM Land Registry safeguards land and property ownership valued at £7 trillion, enabling over £1 trillion worth of personal and commercial lending to be secured against property across England and Wales.

The department wanted to recognise its employees for all their work during the pandemic with a series of thank you cards sent out directly to all employees.

The design team at the Land Registry scoped out Print Marketplace and decided that it was a good fit for the project. They particularly liked the instant prices they could review, as well as being able to support social value by analysing the carbon impact of the job, and the range of SMEs available in the supplier directory.

Stacy Gibbs, Deputy Head of Corporate Communications at HM Land Registry said:

‘We wanted to pay tribute to our colleagues’ hard work after a particularly challenging year and felt a traditional thank you card would be lovely. Print Marketplace offered excellent value for money and achieved exactly what we set out to do, which was to produce a card that would surprise and delight colleagues.’

Cats Protection

Cats Protection is the UK’s largest feline welfare charity, helping around 200,000 cats and kittens every year, thanks in no small part to their network of over 230 volunteer-run branches and more than 30 centres.

The charity was looking to streamline its procurement processes and wanted a print solution that was easy to implement and good value for money. After a demo from the team at Print Marketplace they decided to try the new online tool.

Cats Protection used the marketplace to place an initial order of a range of thank you cards for its fundraisers. As all suppliers are pre-vetted, no extensive procurement process was required.

“I wanted to get in touch to say thank you for your help and how good the ordering process has been. Once this order has been finalised, we will be looking into placing a more expansive order.”

Procurement Officer, Cats Protection

Find out how we can help you

There’s lots of information about the Print Marketplace on our website, including frequently asked questions. 

Registering for Print Marketplace is quick and simple on the website. You can also request a demonstration of the system.

If you have any further questions or would like to speak to a member of our team please fill out this short online form referencing ‘RM6071’ in the comments box.

Alternatively, you can: 

call 0345 410 2222

email info@crowncommercial.gov.uk

Don’t forget, you can find a full list of all the commercial agreements we offer, alongside details of how we can help you build policy considerations into your procurement, in our interactive digital brochure.

The National Procurement Policy Statement – what you need to know

The National Procurement Policy Statement asks that all contracting authorities have due regard to a set of national strategic priorities when exercising their functions relating to procurement.

The statement puts public procurement at the centre of our economic recovery as we build back better from the Covid-19 pandemic, with common benchmarks and standards to enable continuous improvement in public procurement practice and boost the social value generated by the public sector when it buys goods and services. 

The National Procurement Policy Statement – what it means for CCS customers

CCS is already working to implement the strategic priorities:

  • embedding social value through our commercial agreements
  • regularly assessing our capabilities against commercial standards

The guidance focuses on three areas:

Social value

The NPPS sets out national priority outcomes for social value. It places emphasis on creating new businesses, new jobs and new skills; tackling climate change and reducing waste, and improving supplier diversity, innovation and resilience, all themes within the social value model. 

The NPPS clarifies how contracting authorities should secure the best mix of quality and price, directs contracting authorities to include award criteria that achieve social, economic, and environmental benefits, and advises on the development of procurement specifications, as well as other measures.

You can read about how CCS is building social value considerations into our frameworks on the ‘Responsible decisions’ area of the website.

Commercial and procurement delivery

The statement requires all contracting authorities to consider whether they have the right policies and processes in place to manage the key stages of commercial delivery it sets out, where relevant to their procurement portfolio. 

CCS works in partnership with our customers to build the latest Government procurement policy and best practice guidance into our commercial solutions.

Skills and capability for procurement

The statement requires all contracting authorities to consider their organisational capability and capacity, with regard to the procurement skills and resources required to deliver value for money. 

CCS regularly undertakes assessments of capability and capacity against the Government’s commercial standards and publishes the outcomes in our annual report and accounts.

Find out more

You can read the National Procurement Policy Statement along with accompanying guidance on GOV.UK.

Cabinet Office’s Commercial Policy team are hosting webinars for contracting authorities from across the public sector, suppliers and any organisations with an interest in public procurement. You can sign up using Event Brite.

How to prepare for a software audit and avoid excess charges

No organisation wants to be audited, but the fact is, you are likely to face an audit from a supplier at some point so it’s important to be prepared. This is particularly true for software consumers – anyone with a software supplier contract will be aware that they need to be careful to ensure license compliance, ensuring that all of their users are only using applications they are licensed for.

This has become more important than ever in recent years. There are several organisations that have acquired smaller software suppliers, and are now using those acquisitions to drive additional revenue streams through auditing their customers. Most contracts include ‘self declaration license products’ unrestricted by license keys, and often addenda for free license use. Customers without adequate records are at risk, as these organisations can make substantial claims based on several years of accounts, with charges based on recommended retail price (RRP) rates rather than the preferential rates that could have been negotiated in advance.

Luckily, this risk can be mitigated. Here are our recommended top tips to help you avoid unexpected auditing costs:

  1. good contract management including clear paperwork
  2. good software asset management including regular monitoring of software licensing requirements
  3. take any audit communication seriously, and raise immediately with your contract manager and/or procurement team
  4. reach out for support if needed
  5. analyse the audit toolset and the information being presented – check for errors, backdating, interest, and any other additional charges for licenses
  6. do not accept initial claims from the supplier at face value, but do take care to meet deadlines
  7. be mindful of any aggressive tactics from the supplier, such as early completion offers
  8. ensure any agreed claims are full and final settlements, with full license entitlement documentation

Support when you need it

Don’t forget, we have a team of software industry experts here to support you. If you receive notification of an audit, you can contact us by completing our online form or if you would like to speak to a member of a team, call us on 0345 410 2222.  

Please note due to resource constraints, we can only support audits of over £300,000 value.

Discover our 2 new software frameworks

Available to all public sector organisations, the Back Office Software (BOS) and Software Design and Implementation Services (SDIS) frameworks give you access to the software, skills and services you need to deploy cloud-based back office systems or upgrade legacy IT systems.

With an increasing trend for organisations to migrate more of their on premise workloads to the cloud, moving the workloads of back office systems is a fundamental part of this. Often used to manage business operations, including Human Capital Management (HCM) and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), successfully moving these workloads to the cloud can help you achieve large cost and workflow efficiencies. 

You will find market leading vendors and suppliers offering value added services, alongside support and maintenance for products and services through the BOS framework. The framework is ideally suited to support policies such as ‘Cloud First’ and the ‘One Government Cloud Strategy’ where public sector buyers are encouraged to initially consider Software as a Service (SaaS) models, particularly for their enterprise IT and back office functions . 

During extensive market engagement it was clear that one size doesn’t fit all. Organisations have a wide range of requirements from support for migration away from highly customised on premise software,to complex system implementation, configuration and implementation, and specialist support for change management. To that end, the SDIS agreement offers you access to a wide number of suppliers, ranging from SMEs with specialist expertise through to large service integrators and software vendors.

With ‘the cloud’ providing greater ability to automate back office processes and workflows, we want to help you reduce your transactional efforts and focus on more strategic outputs. Given the heightened requirements for cloud migration over the past 12 months, BOS and SDIS will underpin the direction of procurement in this space. 

To supplement these frameworks, we also offer a variety of Memorandum of Understanding (MoUs) with some of the largest vendors in the industry including Microsoft, Oracle and SAP. These agreements offer market leading discounts and beneficial terms for public sector customers buying cloud products and services. 

Let us add power to your procurement

To find out more about our Back Office Software (BOS) and Software Design and Implementation Services (SDIS) frameworks, get in touch with our commercial experts by completing our online form quoting ‘RM6194’ for BOS or ‘RM6193’ for SDIS, or call us on 0345 410 2222. 

Customer newsletters for June

Welcome to our monthly newsletters 

Every month our customer newsletters feature the latest news, webinars, events and aggregation opportunities for the sectors you work in:

If you don’t currently receive our monthly customer newsletter subscribe and you will get these updates and more directly to your inbox. Just fill out this short form.

You can also find a full list of all the commercial agreements we offer, alongside details of how we can help you build policy considerations into your procurement, in our interactive digital brochure.

Crown Commercial Service announces 3 year Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Oracle

This replaces the previous MoU which expired on 30 April 2021 and will continue to deliver excellent value for money for public sector customers across all of Oracle’s cloud-based offerings. 

Customers who are looking to modernise their Oracle estates have access to discounts and a wide variety of commercial benefits through the updated new agreement. It covers everything from infrastructure to software offerings as well as support and maintenance through to cloud migrations. 

The scope of the agreement will include some newly added benefits for example Market Driven Support Transition Services, which offer customers the ability and freedom to migrate aging systems to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, reducing risk and with minimal downtime.

MoUs are a preferential pricing agreement negotiated by CCS on behalf of our customers, and are available to all eligible public sector customers through any route to market used for technology procurement. We recommend using our Back Office Software and Software Design and Implementation Services frameworks for this MoU, which will run until 30 April 2024.

Philip Orumwense, Commercial Director and Chief Technology Procurement Officer at Crown Commercial Service said: 

This enhanced Memorandum of Understanding will continue to deliver savings and benefits for new and existing public sector customers using Oracle’s cloud based technologies. It will continue delivering value for money whilst supporting public sector customers’ journey to the cloud.

Let us bring power to your procurement 

To speak to one of our technology experts to find out how we can support your requirements, please complete our online form quoting ‘Oracle MoU’ and we will be in touch.