by Ian Kirby
Local councils have long been seeking ways to save money to ensure they can safeguard the services they provide to their residents. Against a backdrop of high expectations from their customers and rising demand for services, the need to reduce costs, deliver efficiencies and supplement traditional income streams has never been higher. The ongoing and long-term impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has given extra urgency for the need to seek out new revenue streams. Adopting and driving forward a coherent commercial strategy as one means of achieving this is more important than ever.
Clear rationale
Every organisation needs to have a clear rationale for how much they charge and what they charge for and ensure a strategic approach to setting fees and charges. Before designing a commercial strategy, they need to regard the views of citizens and service users and assess the benefits and risks.
Of those public sector organisations that seek to be genuinely commercial, in our experience, the most successful are the ones that really understand their commercial opportunities and landscape. Not only do they understand what they need to do day-by-day, they are also clear on what they are setting out to achieve going forward.
A bespoke strategy
Although all public sector bodies need to become financially sustainable and provide value for money services, every organisation is different, which means every commercial strategy has to be individually tailored too. This is why at C.Co we developed a commercial strategy framework to help define what success looks like in relation to your organisation and then what the specific objectives of your commercial strategy should be in the short, medium and long term, considering the implications and any risks at every stage. Following this framework will assist in articulating and developing a bespoke commercial strategy that will work for your organisation, supporting your objectives, outcomes and aims.
Characterised by our core values of collaboration and evidence-based decision making and backed up with numerous examples of best practice, our framework will assist in putting a clear strategy in place to support your organisation’s commercial activity. Talk to us about our framework approach.
