HUS procurement policies are up to date
The Finnish healthcare sector is undergoing a major transformation. At the beginning of 2022, HUS decided that it was also time to update the Group’s procurement policy. Timo Martelius, Director of Procurement at HUS, had been involved in the Procurement Finland operational programme that prepared the national procurement strategy, and he identified focus areas that should also be considered in the policies of his workplace.
For example, the importance of sustainability and effectiveness in public procurement has become very prominent, and the plan was to engrain these aspects more strongly into the HUS procurement policies. In healthcare, sustainability is particularly important, as the patient viewpoint and financial considerations are always present in the daily work.
Preparation with a wide range of participants ensures the success of policies
The starting point for drafting the new policies was to involve the employees of HUS in the important procurement issues. Martelius, who had been launching the project with Leena Koponen, Director Corporate Procurement, had heard from friends in other organisations that Hansel had offered valuable assistance in the preparation of policies, which led to an exploration of opportunities for cooperation. Development managers in Hansel’s development services rolled up their sleeves, planned the package of measures and arranged a total of seven workshops to work on the procurement policies between March and September 2022.
“One of the things we realised was an online think tank with almost 50 people from HUS. We really managed to get across the voices of the specialists, the management and those who work in procurement,” says a satisfied Martelius.
All the workshops were held online, which worked well for HUS, where people work at several different locations. The practices for working from home had been well adopted during the pandemic, and the approach worked very well in this case.
“We organised the development of the HUS procurement policies using a project office model. The organisation was efficient, we were able to get our own people on board despite their full daily schedules and the project was completed to a tight schedule, in just a few months,” Martelius explains.
The timing of the project was successful in the sense that there was also time to think about preparedness policies as a whole.
Common language of Hansel’s development managers and HUS procurement specialists
Martelius praises the Hansel employees for the fact that working together was a great success because the development managers had a good understanding of the procurement environment and diverse experience of strategic procurement management in different organisations.
“The Hansel development managers brought their excellent procurement management skills to the table, while myself and the other HUS employees brought our know-how from the specialised healthcare environment. By combining these, we came up with modern procurement policies that suit HUS well,” Martelius sums up the process.
The feedback from working on the procurement policies in a large group has been positive, and working together has certainly committed the specialists to acting as agreed.
“We still have to align our procurement policies with the HUS Group strategy. After that, we will be able to test how well the policies work in practice and prepare an operational programme,” Martelius says.
HUS procurement policies were created in workshops
- Workshops 1a and 1b: Orientation, current state and operating environment for the procurement of HUS
- Workshops 2a and 2b: National procurement strategy and draft policies
- Online think tank: Comments on the draft policies
- Workshop 3: Working on the policies
- Workshop 4: Finalising the policies and targets
- Workshop 5: Refining the policies and operational programme
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