From Vision to Value

For mid-market private sector organisations and public sector bodies across Local Government, NHS, Housing and Education, procurement improvement is too often framed as a technology question – which system, which platform, which upgrade. Caerphilly County Borough Council's 25-year journey with Proactis tells a different story.

Under budget pressure, rising transparency requirements from the Procurement Act 2023, and growing expectations around social value and net zero, councils cannot simply buy their way to a better procurement function. The real challenge is organisational: building a team with the curiosity and confidence to work differently, embedding data as the basis for every decision, and giving leadership the licence to try new approaches – including some that won't work first time.

Liz Lucas, Director of Transformation, Digital & Procurement at Caerphilly CBC, has lived this shift first-hand – from YTS clerk in 1983 to a director overseeing a multidisciplinary team that has won three Welsh GO Awards in the last year alone. Her account, shared in a candid webinar conversation with Proactis, sets out what actually changed: not a single system replacement, but 25 years of continuous investment across three interconnected areas – people who want to make a difference, technology that enables rather than constrains, and leadership prepared to challenge accepted practice.

This paper sets out what that looks like in practice: how Supplier Liaison Officers changed the shape of supplier management, how a customer-built obligation matrix cut contract review from hours to under an hour, and why choosing a technology partner rather than a supplier has underpinned the whole process.

The lessons are as relevant to a private sector procurement function as to a local authority.