BCA case study
THE COMPANY
British Car Auctions has over 60 years of experience in the car auction market. Established in 1946, as Southern Counties Car Auctions, the company now has a network of 21 auction centres across the UK and European mainland.
Employing 1500 people, BCA handles over 1 million vehicles every year, and generates a turnover in excess of £2 billion. For over 60 years, the company has remained at the very cutting edge of the car auction and remarketing industry.
THE CUSTOMER'S CHALLENGE
BCA engaged The Network Collective to guide and facilitate a process to address the next stage in the evolution of its UK Wide Area Network (WAN). BCA's key goals were to secure a high quality network service, critical in delivering new and increased opportunities in ecommerce. It needed to have the scale and flexibility to meet the company's changing needs, whilst at the same time BCA wanted to secure favourable rates, preferably at lower costs, in a period of economic uncertainty in the marketplace.
THE NETWORK COLLECTIVE APPROACH
The Network Collective began by holding a technical consultation with BCA. This meant that key technical design elements could be identified, and provided clarification of BCA's requirements for the WAN the company hoped to procure. Based on these findings, The Network Collective worked with BCA to produce an industry-leading RFP, which was issued to seven service providers.
The Network Collective managed the relationship with the service providers, taking charge of briefing them, scoring their proposals, and scheduling their presentations. It was also able to lead the commercial,technical and operational negotiation alongside BCA.
Following a Best and Final Offer (BAFO) round, which involved three shortlisted suppliers, BCA selected Global Crossing as its preferred supplier. The Network Collective then worked closely with BCA and Global Crossing to negotiate the legal agreement in detail, leveraging its significant market knowledge to ensure that BCA got the best possible contractual terms.
Throughout this WAN procurement, British Car Auctions was delighted with the smooth and professional manner in which The Network Collective managed the process. As a result of engaging The Network Collective to procure its new WAN, BCA achieved an improved level of service, a technically and commercially flexible contract structure and a reduction in recurring charges for its wide area network.
THE CUSTOMER'S VIEW
"Our engagement with The Network Collective was highly effective. Their people were very experienced, capable and personable and worked well alongside ours. We were impressed by their knowledge and expertise through the process of design and selection. We have been very pleased with the outcome, our new WAN provision with Global Crossing is appreciably a step change improvement over what we had before. The role played by The Network Collective in helping us achieve this in a structured and timely manner, at a cost-benefit result that exceeded our expectations has been greatly appreciated."
Justin Pidgeon, Procurement Specialist
