Supporting a care group procurement lead as a collaborative partner
Overview
In 2022, Affordable Housing and Healthcare Group (AHH)’s procurement lead engaged allmanhall to provide a solution for their food procurement and identify deliverable cost savings without compromising on quality, improve the service of suppliers and eliminate the burden of administrative tasks through a central billing solution.
Drawing on the experience from allmanhall’s dedicated mobilisation team, expert support was provided to catering teams across the AHH community, in addition to demonstrating significant cost savings.
Background
Affordable Housing and Healthcare Group (AHH) is a social infrastructure group co-investing to create long-term holding and affordable shared ownership housing.
AHH partnered with food supply chain experts allmanhall to provide food procurement for their growing community of 4 Encore Care Homes and 5 Platinum Skies Retirement Villages, comprising over 300 care home beds and more than 500 homes. Encore Care Homes offer residents home cooked, balanced, nutritious meals, and Platinum Skies Retirement Villages feature a range of
communal facilities including their exclusive Bistros where homeowners can enjoy quality food and drink.
AHH’s Head of Hospitality and Procurement was looking for a partner to provide full management of the food and catering related supply chain…
What was needed?
AHH required assistance with supplier and platform related activity, to benefit from more competitive pricing, alongside a reduction of administrative time through a central billing system to avoid processing their 2,904 annual catering invoices. It was essential that supplier changes did not cause disruption to their sites, so with allmanhall’s dedicated mobilisation team and robust process and experience of change management, the required solution was delivered through regular mobilisation meetings to ensure all activity and integration was successful.
AHH’s key objectives were:
- Identify deliverable cost savings
- Central billing
- Ensure the quality of products is not compromised
- Maintain and improve the service of suppliers
- Ongoing support and expertise
The results?
The first benchmark for AHH resulted in a 9.4% saving and since mobilising in November 2022, allmanhall’s team of CIPS qualified buyers, secured better pricing and an improved service from suppliers. A smooth mobilisation process was achieved through hands on support from our finance, helpdesk, technical, operations and dietetic teams.
Utilising the industry-leading catering software provided by allmanhall, AHH were able to improve their overall visibility of where food budgets were being spent, with streamlined stock control, and administration efficiencies by consolidating their catering invoices into one monthly invoice. In addition, AHH have access to insights, news and updates on inflation, commodities, food trends, nutrition, and legislation. A great help and value add support for their procurement, acting as an extension of the team.
What did the client say?
“allmanhall have greatly minimised the time we spend on admin, and we now have complete transparency and visibility of our food spend, enabling us to confidently demonstrate efficient cost effective practices to our residents. We really appreciate how uncomplicated the administration has become, the catering software and tablets really help to streamline our processes, removing previous challenges. The proactive approach with wine sampling for our residents, along with nutritional talks from their dietitian, enabled our communities to be part of our menu creation. Having a local client relationship team who are always happy to support, has been really valuable”.
Amy Nemeth, AHH, Head of Hospitality and Procurement
Hear more about schools enjoying the benefits of in-house catering and allmanhall’s support and tech:
