IPA is a market leading procurement specialist and catering consultancy that continually pushes the boundaries to provide effective purchasing strategies; reducing overall costs to consistently maximise profits on behalf of their members across the catering, hospitality and leisure, education, healthcare and hygiene industry sectors.

Founded in 1993 by Vanessa Turner, a highly respected buying and purchasing professional within the procurement arena – her ‘Robin Hood’ tendencies and strong negotiating skills has often enabled the IPA team to offer the best deals to members - IPA’s mission is, and has always been, to bring together businesses and institutions to provide a free purchasing and product sourcing service.  By implementing ‘tried and tested’ strategies, IPA have made it possible for smaller companies to have access to at least the equivalent, if not better, discounts that the larger businesses enjoy.

Allie Philpin, Marketing Executive at IPA, explains that, “… by grouping together the independent businesses and negotiating competitive prices collectively on their behalf, it is possible for IPA to deliver the preferential rates that are usually only available to the larger companies and corporate organisations.  With free membership, any UK business that wants to reduce their costs in key spend areas can join IPA, from schools and colleges, to hospitality establishments and independent catering professionals.”

IPA provide three key services to their members, a consultancy service, a managed service and an audit service which, together, improves overall purchasing power.  Reducing the cost of bought-in goods and services significantly improves the bottom line figure.  IPA conduct a detailed Audit  of a business’ costs, benchmarking pricing against a realistic set of criteria, and provide a detailed analysis including price comparisons that measure existing food/equipment costs items against the ‘real’ price paid from IPA’s supplier database. 

By establishing themselves as purchasing partners with many group and independent businesses, net costs are improved administration reduced through their Managed service.  This enables members to actively source the best catering commodities and resources via IPA.  Key advantages of purchasing partners include clear, transparent pricing on invoices, monthly invoice commodity price monitoring, supplier risk assessment and approval, regular reviews of supplier performance, fixed pricing across key product areas, and a dedicated account management team. 

IPA’s consultancy service is becoming an increasingly important element in providing professional, creative advice to members and clients, and specialist consultants develop practical solutions that can be effectively implemented when required.  A key area is the conducting of strategic and operational reviews or procurement policies, practices and procedures.  Our reporting structure provides detailed feedback with practical, cost-effective recommendations covering all aspects including supply chain management, price competitiveness and the maintaining of quality of goods that have been received.

A new service that has been introduced this year is Central Billing; invoices are sent to IPA who collate and process the data via their in-house system, then generates a monthly Statement that details all the transactions with suppliers… the member makes just one payment.  With more control and better management and ongoing support from IPA, Central Billing is proving to reduce paperwork and bank charges!  Plus members can earn 1% Cashback on purchases.

IPA offer a wide range of products and services – from food and non-food goods, to big brands and fresh, local produce – a portfolio of over 300 leading national and local suppliers, such as 3663, Brakes, Nestle, Coca Cola, Unilever and Britvic.  From implementing purchasing strategies for educational and healthcare bodies with their catering purchases, to supporting and working with well-known organisations who run their own food service operations, IPA is proud to work with small businesses to help improve their financial performance, quality of goods and services, and sourcing solutions.

For more information
Tel: 01372 466966
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www.ipapurchasing.co.uk

Case Study
Edenham High School in Croydon, South London who cater for 1200 pupils aged 11-16 years of age and a Sixth Form, wanted to transfer their catering in-house and approached IPA for help and advice.  An Audit was implemented to analyse their current purchasing and deliver recommendations for product sourcing and financial savings.  A price review was conducted on all grocery and frozen food purchases which demonstrated that substantial savings of over 18% could be achieved.  Edenham, also changed to IPA’s recommended local fresh fruit and vegetable wholesaler, and meat supplier, which delivered not only a significant improvement in quality and reliability, but also a further impressive 20% in cost savings.

Edenham registered for IPA’s Central Billing service which has alleviated a lot of the administration time for the accounts department by reducing the paying of all invoices from all suppliers to just one statement per month via IPA.

Janet Tonks, Catering Manager, commented, “Edenham High wanted to move away from a contract caterer to enable us to offer better quality and variety of food for the same price; with the help and support from IPA, this was made possible.  It also became clear how many invoices needed to be processed and payments needed to be paid, so we took up IPA’s offer of Central Billing which has reduced this , and we have just one billing to pay at the end of the month to IPA.”

“IPA not only helps with food costs, but everything to do with running a busy business. You just have to ring and if they don’t have the answer, they will find out.  IPA made the transition easy with their friendly, approachable advice and fantastic savings!”