Overview

 Clarify commercial and operational balance - Confused responsibilities and poor knowledge-transfer weaken contract management

Integrating commercial teams with policy, operational and business teams is one of the biggest challenges for public sector contracts. Commercial and policy, operational and business teams need to work together to develop a clear understanding of the outcomes required and how a contract will deliver these. Organisations are at different stages in both bringing together these functions and handling the transfer of knowledge and responsibility between teams. We remain unconvinced that anyone has cracked how to do this fully. At an organisational level, some government departments have tried to do things differently, with business areas taking more ownership of the process.