Case study

Management Consultancies Association

Best Management Practice Awards 2004

Outsourcing Consultancy Category Winner - Gold Award

Client: Medicines Control Agency

Implementing major strategic change through groundbreaking outsourcing

PA Consulting Group has helped the Medicines Control Agency to set up a highly innovative, strategic outsourcing contract, within only two years from the time the project was first conceived. The arrangement has already started to deliver a 20% reduction in operating costs. The benefits of improved procedures for approving medicines and monitoring their safety has been extended to the general public, pharmaceutical companies and the NHS.

Facing an ever-increasing volume of work, the Agency required a radical change in the way it operated - in particular its management of information. The Agency had developed an information management strategy which defined at a high level the information solution and the business activities it would support. But the problem was how to design, develop, implement and operate this new information management solution at the same time as continuing business as usual. The Agency knew that outsourcing was the only answer.

The ambition was in place but there were no hard definitions that would allow an outsourcer to price this contract in a conventional manner. The Agency needed its outsourcer to work with it in an open-ended way to define the new systems and processes, and share the risk throughout the contract - not something that a traditional outsourcing contractor would usually consider without charging huge insurance premiums to cover its costs.

PA worked closely with the Agency to design a new kind of outsourcing contract which allows for variation in planned expenditure - to be agreed on a project-by-project basis - and which shares risk between the Agency and the outsourcer without unacceptable cost overheads for either party. Rigorous governance processes designed by PA ensured the Agency would stay firmly in control throughout. This was not the way most outsourcing contracts had been done before, and certainly not in the public sector.

"I am delighted that this case study has won Gold in the Outsourcing category in this year's Management Consultancies Association Awards. This is an excellent example of outsourcing achieving a successful outcome through collaborative working between PA Consulting Group and our organisation."

Professor Kent Woods, Chief Executive, Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency

Note: The Medicines Control Agency and the Medical Devices Agency were merged on 1 April 2003 to form the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency