Providing a knowledge boost for NHS Test & Trace

The Market Engagement & Strategy team within the NHS Test and Trace program was faced with a gap in its capability to provide intelligence and insights to its commercial teams, which needed this support to enable strategy building. Efficio bridged this gap and provided intelligent and actionable insights and information to the commercial teams across a variety of essential categories. 

The challenge

DHSC’s Market Engagement & Strategy team needed to quickly understand the market dynamics and identify new or existing suppliers across a range of different products and services, including lateral flow device (LFD) tests, private and antibody testing, and other retained categories, such as Consumables, Reagents & Equipment, Laboratory Capacity and New Testing Technology.
Specifically, the team needed intelligence to: 

• Understand market dynamics for a range of different products and services (such as LFD tests, private testing, and antibody testing) to inform governmental decision-making
• Identify new or existing suppliers that could provide products/services of interest (such as Consumables Reagents & Equipment, LFDs, and Genomic Sequencing) to inform sourcing decisions
• Understand foreign policy decisions in relation to COVID-19

The solution

The Test & Trace Programme’s Market Engagement & Strategy Team needed a specialist partner that could provide market intelligence to support mass testing. The service would provide data and analysis to the relevant categories, which would inform the strategic decisions that the category teams were required to make. 

Efficio’s value proposition provided:

• A procurement and supply chain specialist firm with experience providing the required services
• Access to the best market research resources
• A partnership with broader external expert networks
• A flexible on-demand model

The approach

• Efficio rapidly established a flexible delivery model, placing a core insights consulting team with information support from a scalable research partner.
• Governance procedures were put in place jointly with the client to ensure a smooth transition of requirements and informational deliverables.
• Efficio developed a strong relationship with core commercial teams and deeply embedded the research consultant within the client team to understand and alleviate pain points.
• The relationship culminated with a thorough training session to enable the team to further develop its own intelligence function.