Our team has worked with many leading organisations across a wide range of sectors and in both UK and international settings. Jon Howell is the owner and Director of Blue Pencil Procurement Ltd, and prior to this Jon led the advisory practice at Optimum Procurement. This followed stints in the Big 4 at PwC and KPMG where Jon was a Director. In this time, Jon led numerous strategic procurement transformation assignments for international blue chip clients. Most recently, Jon has worked in the Middle East on projects in the UAE, Qatar and Oman. Prior to consulting, Jon started a 28 year career in procurement with senior procurement roles at British Airways and British Rail.

The bluepencil team have worked with a range of leading global brands, delivering procurement change and cost reduction programmes in sectors as diverse as FS, manufacturing, pharmaceutical, retail, telecommunications, media and television, oil and gas, leisure, utilities and transport as well as having experience in the public sector.

Bluepencil is a relatively new business and much of our experience has been gained in roles at various stages of our careers. Some examples of projects we have worked on include:

• Our team managed the review, design and development of a new procurement function and strategy for a global financial services organisation. This included design of all procurement processes, governance and structure and the delivery by the team of initial savings to achieve the targeted benefits levels
• We led a team of associates programme managing the specification, sourcing and implementation of a P2P implementation for a leading travel and leisure organisation across the UK
• Our team has led on a global procurement change management programme for a leading global insurance organisation. With resource based out of 6 countries in Europe and North America, the team identified and implemented best practice processes and global savings across the $7bn spend
• Working with a UK electricity retailer and distribution organisation, we led a team which redesigned the procurement approach including the implementation of eProcurement systems across the UK
• We have worked extensively with clients in the Middle East and in the UK to deliver capability assessments and development programmes, assessing the procurement function and team, designing action plans to close gaps and monitoring the activity to ensure that the improvements were delivered
• We have conducted an end to end review of policies and procedures for an organisation in the television industry, recommending and implementing improvements across the range of procurement activity
• We worked with a leading aerospace organisation to review their future partnering and supplier management requirements and to develop an approach to managing these relationships that would deliver the best supplier and partnership outcomes for the organisation as their commercial offering developed.

Organisations that members of the bluepencil team has worked with:

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RBS, Zurich, Barclays, e.ON, United Utilities, Ministry of Defence, Cooperative Group, Marks and Spencer, NATS, Henderson Global Investors, Petrofac, Bourne Leisure, British Airways, Virgin Atlantic, AXA, AEGON UK, Schroder’s, Fidelity and Aviva. Internationally, our team members have engaged with organisations such as China Light and Power, Qatar Foundation, Oman Oil, MBC Group, Qatar Aluminium, DP World and Polarcus as well as many others across the Middle East.