Vanquis Banking Group (“VBG”) is a a FTSE All Share company, and a leading specialist bank, focused on the near prime and mid cost credit markets.
The Group has been providing financial inclusion, which supports social mobility, to those whose needs have not been well met by traditional lenders for over 140 years. A responsible lender that provides tailored products and services to 1.7 million customers throughout the UK.
“We’re proud to support the 1 in 5 people in the UK who can’t get access to credit products through mainstream banks and building societies. We want to provide a helping hand when others don’t. That’s why our aim is to continue to develop better banking products for the 10-12 million people in the UK who deserve good quality products that they can’t get anywhere as well as to support the whole of the UK population to build up their financial resilience and better protect themselves against the rising cost of living.
Lending responsibly and acting responsibly has always been at the centre of everything we do. What’s more, helping to aid financial inclusion and social mobility for our customers and the communities they live in is a big part of why we’re here. You only need to look at our purpose to understand what motivates us:
Our purpose: To help put people on a path to a better everyday life.
We offer credit cards and loans as Vanquis, Vehicle Finance as Moneybarn and through the award-winning fin-tech brand Snoop, our group can now provide people with personalised insights to help them better manage and understand their finances. All our credit products are delivered online and are built with customer flexibility in mind, and we also have a great team of colleagues working in our UK call centres and offices to support our customers and the development of more products to help meet their needs.”
That introduction was provided by VBG Groups Head of Procurement Steven Schools. Steven and his procurement team have been busy unifying and transforming VBG’s procurement function in order to be fit and able to meet the goals and purpose of the wider business.
The VBG procurement transformation is a story of collaboration and dedication from team members, stakeholders, strategic suppliers and partners, that has culminated in an all-encompassing group wide transformation. As Steven explained.
Steven you have been Head of Group procurement at Vanquis since October 2022 but this does not tell the entire story of your career so far with the Group.
I joined the Group in 2009 as a procurement manager, this was within one of the divisions called the Consumer Credit Division (“CCD”), this was a doorstep lending division known as Provident or “the Provi”, which sadly was closed back in 2020 due to several reasons.
The Procurement department was newly formed in 2007 and only had coverage within a few departments, I focused on areas where Procurement had been rebuffed previously with offers of support and quickly gained traction, providing excellent assistance in problem areas, plus of course helping stakeholders renegotiate prices and holding supplier to account against SLA and other commitments.
I was promoted to senior procurement manager in 2012, where I was given two other departments to manage, it was evident that both departments had been operating under the same processes for many years, therefore I could see efficiencies in the operating model for both departments.
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In 2014 the head of procurement at the time transferred to head up the business change team, this was my opportunity to lead the procurement team, which the business recognised and officially made me the head of Procurement in 2015.
In 2019 VBG had 3 separate procurement departments for the 3 main lending divisions, I saw a huge opportunity to gain massive efficiencies and savings by combining these into a single group function, providing services to all areas of the group. I outlined a high-level plan with benefits in a board paper, which was approved, so from 2020 I was the Group Head of Procurement, which I created a 3-year plan to consolidate, standardise and drive out as much benefits and additional value as possible, including new technologies to have better visibility and control over the groups spend.
It is an interesting time at VBG with the organisation well into an all-encompassing transformation. What has brought about this transformation?
Due to the previous operating model for 3 main divisions, this meant 3 separate IT infrastructures, which were not linked in any way, simple requests to be more joined up, meant huge IT projects to link different parts of the infrastructure to enable, the often-simple request.
As the group’s strategic direction was to be more aligned, a decision was taken to unify the IT systems, several options were tabled and discussed at length, but VBG landed on building a greenfield new IT stack, of which we would migrate the products we offer onto this, and then retire the legacy systems.
The goal here was to have a state-of-the-art cloud-based model, with no legacy systems, which invariably caused issues and reduced VBG’s agility, so that would enable the group to grow and adapt and have a USP over our competitors, have a lower cost base, so that we could offer better more attractive rates to our customers.
Procurement is at the heartbeat of this transformation. With an overhaul of your tech stack, new processes, operating systems, and much more, there are certainly numerous plates spinning. Talk us through your procurement evolution.
The 1st thing I needed to do was to assess what documents, process and procedures and maturity level of the different areas of the 3 Procurement departments. Once this had been completed a full collaborative and interactive session with the newly formed team was set up, so that we could divide the different areas of focus into smaller SME cohorts within procurement. These cohorts were focused on smaller deliverables, which would all add up to the larger transformation taking place.
Choosing our standard, utilising best practice, whilst balancing with external (to procurement) requirements from other departments and the regulators, then implementing the new standard or practice across the group and bringing the business on the journey to a standardised and more mature procurement function. This was particularly important as there were still several areas of the business that had not been mandated to use procurement and so investigations in this area were worrying, but were significantly reduced by the new requirement to comply and adhere to the new procurement policy and ways of working.
Part of the transformation was to redesign our onboarding and in-life due diligence process for 3rd party suppliers, to take a more risk-based approach to new and ongoing due diligence, this then linked into an update of the tiering formula we use, which the team then went and re-classified all the suppliers to ensure consistency across all of the 1300 suppliers.
The final strategic part of my plan was systems, this focused on 2 areas, P2P/Coupa and also digitising our due diligence process with Riskonnect.
VBG did not have a single P2P platform, meaning that spend control and data was by no means optimum, performing periodic group wide spend reports took up to 3 weeks to get the full picture due to the disparate systems and data sources from different parts of the group. After the implementation of Coupa spend reports can be done in minutes.
As the implementation of Coupa was pivotal to the success of my plan, we needed an implementation partner that would work as one with my team and the wider business, flexing where needed and of course at a reasonable price. After looking at multiple different options we selected Barkers. Barkers shone through the RFP process and it became evident that their flexible and innovative approach, far outweighed the other well respected suppliers, who had bid for the work. The project hit bumps in the road, mainly from other projects running in parallel that impacted our delivery, but I’m very pleased to say that each challenge was debated and solutionised, meaning that I was very pleased with the fixed price project, which was delivered on time and within budget and to an amazing standard.
We are in the final stages of our digitisation of Riskonnect, this project has been just as intense and required far more attention, due to its’ bespoke nature of our requirements for the configuration of their TPRM Module, I’m pleased to say that after some very large challenges, that we are on track to deliver this into production by December.
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In many procurement transformation stories there is an underlying narrative of procurement battling for buy in from the exec leadership, but in your case the entire organisation is on a transformation journey together. Based on your significant experience how beneficial to you believe this has been to the overall achievements and aims?
It has been hugely beneficial, as the board desired a group wide unified approach, this enabled me to produce a business case for unification of the departments and the wider transformation and maturity of procurement within VBG.
Procurement and Finance were running 2 parallel and inter-dependent projects, as finance were implementing a new single source general ledger, this was inherently linked into the deployment of Coupa. That meant that we had a single goal, but sometimes competing priorities and as an additional accountable exec to work with, it was very important that we remained aligned and practical, to ensure both our projects were delivered together, which they were.
The Coupa project team which was made up of a part of my team and Barkers, worked hard to collaborate and give direction to other 3rd party providers, who were engaged in the project, this cross project, cross functional working was essential to the delivery of both the general ledger and Coupa within the tight timescales we had set for ourselves.
Barkers helped VBG in defining business requirements, ways of working and future system design by collaborating with various internal SME’s across VBG.
Key Implementation Partner: Barkers
Being realistic of course there will be challenges and points of friction given the volume of moving parts. What would you point to as the primary challenges, how have you attempted to work around these?
The primary challenges that we faced in this project were:
- Many interdependencies from other projects and areas outside of my control;
- Balancing 2 FTE resource in my team to dedicate to this project for 9 months, with how to re-allocate their BAU day job tasks;
- Being mis-informed or not being advised or key items/strategy changes or new issues;
- Picking the correct suppliers to ensure success.
I ensured that my 2 FTE split their time, so that they could attend key project meetings of the other projects where we had dependencies, this was critical to our success, as this led to far less primary challenge happening, although did not prevent it entirely. This enabled both projects to run better, so both of us were far more aligned and led to speedier discussions, or to highlight areas where one decision would affect another in a negative way.
I re-evaluated the FTE’s BAU tasks and trained some other team members to do the most critical tasks that were still required on a day-to-day basis, then took a risk based approach to other items, where I advised key stakeholders or the new approach and to expect some deviations, whilst this project was ongoing, also mentioning any direct benefits to them after the systems had been implemented.
VBG’s experience with other system integrators across the group had made myself very guarded and cautious for my own project. One of our current P2P system builds was not functioning optimally from a previous installation back in 2018. The specialist nature of our system integration challenges meant that the success of system transformations was heavily reliant on deploying a provider who would deliver against very tight timescales, and to budget. We aspired for a partner who ‘got us’ as a business and would work flexibly in a very challenging time for our business, in an ever-evolving business transformation. Barkers delivered this and more; acting as a true extension of our own team, the Barkers Digital team worked seamlessly with us to guide us to, and deliver, the best technical solution.
As previously mentioned the processes and technology landscape have significantly changed, how important has not only the solutions but the ability to work collaboratively with key tech and implementation partners been to the process so far? Was the opportunity to work with partners that did not fall into the ‘one size fits’ all mentality an important factor in selecting specific partners?
A key consideration for the overall VBG IT strategy was to select strategic partners with products and services to meet the differing needs of the business. The business detailed key architectural principals and non-functional requirements, that weren’t to be deviated from. This helped in the selection process, as we assessed different suppliers’ offerings against the overall architecture that was required to be built.
During the RFP process, the different stakeholder teams understood that this was very different to what had been done before, so they knew they would need partners who could flex and change direction if required, without masses of resistance or contractual debates and negotiations.
Due to the individual IT systems for the separate divisions, we sometimes had several suppliers that were providing the same product or service; however it was of paramount importance that we selected a partner that would fulfil and meet the vision of VBG and work with us, collaborating with VBG as one team, helping us design and implement the future IT for VBG.
Zoot who provided a decision engine to us, stood out as they had already previously stepped in, when another partner had started to struggle with a critical delivery, the impact of this would have been catastrophic to one of VBG’s division, Zoot created a plan and delivered a new system within very tight timescales to ensure the continuation of service to our customers. This kind of attitude and success of delivery was evident in their ongoing engagement versus other providers we had, this was incredibly important to VBG’s transformation and path to success.
UST who provide many resourcing IT services, had also provided different services to several parts of the group since 2016, were considered in the overall resourcing model mix for delivery, as it was pivotal to have the right balance between system integrators, in house teams and on and off shore resources. Due to previous successful deliveries and a very flexible contract, this allowed for UST and VBG to contract knowing that both parties would receive what they expected, but with the added benefit of being able to flex up and down on resources at a moment’s notice. Barkers who were completely new to VBG, went through a comprehensive tender process, where they outshone their competitors, by providing me the comfort that they could be flexible and adaptable, whilst bringing knowledge to the implementation that had not been done previously. The one-team approach was also underpinned by a sense of accountability that we recognised and could rely on. As with any complex system change, there can be unwelcome challenges; the tenacity of the combined Barkers and VBG team overcame these with pragmatism, openness and honesty. A key point for VBG was enhancing the knowledge of our own team. The Barkers Digital team promoted knowledge sharing throughout the project to further improve our own in-house capabilities.
Digital Transformation Partner: UST
We have touched upon processes and technology so what about people? This procurement transformation will place the function on the front foot. Pro-active not reactive. How proud are you of the team during this transformation? Is it fair to say that creating an entrepreneurial culture will be the backbone to future successes?
The team have been amazing, really embracing my vision of a unified group department, the team went above and beyond and were really invested in the departments maturity and ways of working.
They have worked really well with challenging the BAU practices and all helped to shape the department to where it is today. Without their effort and enthusiasm, we would not have been able to achieve what we have, plus in a really short space of time.
The team have also been the groups advocates on this transformation, publicising what we are doing, what we have done to key stakeholders to bring VBG on the journey, communicating the rationale, so that stakeholders were bought in and not obtrusive to any new processes and procedures. This was particularly important, as different areas of the business had different previous levels of interaction with procurement and supplier governance, ranging from reasonably embedded to non-existent, therefore a cultural shock had to be managed carefully, as going from nothing to mature in one jump, was quite the leap. However stakeholders were keen to learn and embraced the change, but I do put that down to great comms and stakeholder management by the team itself in all areas.
Dividing up the overall goal into small cohorts really worked, as the team were invested in their deliverable(s) and so could see the fruits of their labour and also see the benefits and how they were pivotal to the overall strategy to unify and mature the department as a whole, which in turn would mean a more cohesive alignment to the overall business’ strategy.
Much has been achieved so far but there is still much to do. What do you want to achieve in the coming 12 months?
From a procurement perspective I want to finish delivering the Riskonnect TPRM module and start to use that from January 2024, I also want to continue to deliver what the business requires by further leveraging the new technology and access to fast data, which we didn’t have previously.
In conjunction I am nearly 12 months into a new 3-year plan for my supplier management department, so have plans to unify, standardise and implement new processes and procedures to mature this area for in-life supplier relationship management across VBG.