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Corporate Certification

Your organisation's journey to world-class

CIPS Corporate Certification assesses how organisations operate their procurement and supply function against globally respected standards.  It provides an awards-based pathway to achieving world-class procurement and supply.

By working towards Corporate Certification organisations across all sectors - publicView our product brochure and private - find they improve the performance of their procurement and supply function and realise better ways to do even greater work. 

Corporate Certification also helps to build reputation, credibility, stakeholder engagement and staff empowerment. 

 

Healthcheck

Do you have the basics in place?  Discover the health of your organisation’s procurement and supply operations.  Find out if your organisation is ready to head out on the Corporate Certification awards based journey with our quick, free healthcheck.

Free initial healthcheck

 

How

The first step to being world-class is to establish you have the fundamentals in place to operate an effective procurement and supply function.  Your organisation can achieve this by being assessed against the CIPS Corporate Certification Standard. Based on the evidence that you provide, CIPS assesses your procurement policies, strategies, procedures and processes against the Standard.  The assessment is structured around five dimensions:

 

  • leadership and organisation
  • strategy
  • people
  • process and systems
  • performance measurement and management

 

Successful completion results in an award that is valid for three years and helps you to establish a strong footing on the path to world-class.

 

Realise your procurement potential  

Once we’ve helped you establish that the right policies, strategies, procedures and processes are in place we encourage you to work towards higher awards by being assessed against the Corporate Certification Advanced Standard.  An award against the Advanced Standard demonstrates how well your procurement and supply function is performing.  Workshops are used to identify where improvements can be made and a maturity profile is used to assess your organisation’s progression from advanced to world-class - helping you to deliver efficient, effective and economic ways of working.

 

Levels of award

The four awards of Corporate Certification are:

Award

Procurement and Supply Achievement

Platinum

World-Class processes, strategies, policies and procedures

Gold

Leading processes, strategies, policies and procedures

Silver

Advanced processes, strategies, policies and procedures

Standard

Effective processes, strategies, policies and procedures

 

Fig 1: Overview of Corporate Certification 

Benefits

  • Value:
    Successful completion of Corporate Certification has been proven to deliver significant cost savings
  • Performance:
    CIPS Corporate Certification builds efficient, effective and economic ways of working
  • Reputation:
    Achievement of a CIPS Corporate Certification award boosts reputation, awareness and credibility
  • Risk Management:
    Participation in CIPS Corporate Certification can improve risk identification, management and mitigation
  • Relationships:
    Successful accreditation results in stronger stakeholder relationships and increased staff morale and engagement levels

Achievers

Achievers of process excellence

Over 100 organisations across all sectors and in countries around the world have benefited from working towards procurement process excellence with CIPS.

They include (with organisations achieving a Gold Certification highlighted in bold):

Sector

Organisation

Public

Audit Commission

Barnsley Metropolitan Borough Council

Bedfordshire County Council

Commissioning Business Services

Crown Prosecution Services

DEFRA

Department of Infrastructure, State Government of Victoria (Australia)

East Riding of Yorkshire

Essex County Council

GCHQ

Hertfordshire County Council

Highways Agency

MET Office

Metropolitan Police

Ministry of Justice

NHS Blood & Transplant

NHS Supply Chain

Office of Fair Trading

OFGEM

OGC Buying Solutions

Olympic Delivery Authority

Royal Mail Group

Scotland Excel

Suffolk County Council

The Home Office

Transport for London


Financial Services

American Express Services Europe Ltd

AVIVA

Bank of England

Credit Suisse

European Central Bank

Prudential Plc

Suncorp (Australia)

Zurich Financial Services (UK)


Telecoms

BT

COLT Telecoms

Virgin Media

Siemens Enterprise Communications Ltd


IT/Technology

Atos Origin

Computacenter

CSC Central Region

CSC Northern Region

Dubai Silicon Oasis Authority

Mercato Solutions

Microsoft

Probrand Ltd

QinetiQ

Thomson Reuters

Xerox (Global Purchasing)


Manufacturing/Distribution

Brammer UK Ltd

Communisis UK Ltd

Geodis

Honeywell (Novar Group)


Advertising

Yell Ltd


Retail

ASDA (Wal*Mart)

Coles (Australia)

Home Retail Group

Simplot (Australia)


Food & Drink

Allied Bakeries

Rank Hovis McDougall


Automotive

Aston Martin


Transport

British Airways

CEVA logistics

DHL

DP World (Dubai)

First Group Plc

Go-Ahead Group plc

Gatwick Airport

Metro Trains

National Air Traffic Services (NATS)

Network Rail

Railcorp

Wincanton


Consultancy

Accenture (UK) Ltd

Proxima

PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP


Utilities

Balfour Beatty Utility Solutions


Energy Services

BG Group

CLP Power Hong Kong Ltd

Centrica

Doosan Babcock Energy

Ecopetrol S.A

Elexon

Emirates Nuclear Energy Corporation (Abu Dhabi)

Energex (Australia)

Fertil

Masdar (Dubai)

Nuclear Decommissioning Authority

Orlen Upstream (Poland)

Oil Search (Australia)

Pacific Rubiales Energy (Colombia S.A.)

Rasgas (Qatar)

Scottish Water

Sellafield Ltd

Subsea 7 Ltd

Technip UK Limited

Western Power Distribution

Western Power, Australia

Worley Parsons

Zadco (Abu Dhabi)


Facilities

Atkins Asset Management

Carillion Services

Dalkia PLC

Johnson Controls Ltd

MITIE

Sodexo Remotes Sites Scotland Ltd


Education, Science & Community Development

King Abdullah University of Science & Technology (KAUST, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia)

London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games Ltd (LOCOG)

Qatar Foundation

University of Reading

UNOPS


Media

BBC

Dubai Media Incorporated (UAE)

MBC Group (Dubai)


Construction

Skanska


Leisure

Camelot Group


Property Management

Home Group


Waste Management

Veolia ES (UK) Ltd

 

Case studies | Quotes

Certification customer case studies and testimonials

Take a look at some examples of organisations who are adopting best in class in their procurement operations. 

american express case study
Audit commission case study

Communisis Case Study

Home Office case study

MBC case study
NATS Case study
 

Orlen upstream

Prudential case study

 
Scottish Water
Skanska case study

 

Transport for London - Case study
 

Xerox case study

Western power distribution

   

There are more than 100 public and private sector organisations that have achieved CIPS Certification, take a look at some of the examples below:

Achieving business objectives

“(Certification) ensures we are adopting all of the correct policies, procedures and processes to maximise every opportunity with our suppliers and therefore we are offering the best to our customers.”  – Shirley Cooper, Procurement and Returns Director, Computacenter

“As with all councils, Bedfordshire has a stretching agenda for savings through professional procurement.  (Achieving Certification) gives us confidence that we have a firm foundation on which to work towards those opportunities.” – Terri Carr, Strategic Procurement Advisor, Bedfordshire County Council

“One of our key targets is to reduce external expenditure by £300 million and this will be largely achieved through company-wide compliance to our procurement processes.  I am pleased these processes have been given recognition with CIPS Certification.” – John Rishton, Chief Financial Officer, British Airways

“Success in achieving CIPS Certification standard of excellence in purchasing policies and procedures will help the procurement and logistics division of UNRWA to maximise value for money when purchasing goods, services and construction contracts for vital relief work” – Fredrik Schultz, Chief of the Procurement and Logistics Division, United Nations Relief And Works Agency For Palestine Refugees In The Near East (UNRWA)

Staying competitive

“Gaining CIPS certification will demonstrate that Accenture Procurement BPO Services delivers high performance procurement in managing our own internal spend as well as for clients.”  Karl Pick, Global Procurement Director, Accenture

“CIPS Certification will drive continued improvement.  We want to operate on a world-class platform and this will ensure we are able to do that.” – Sandra Brown, Group Operations Director, Tetley Group (part of Tata Tea and the Tata Group)

"CIPS Certification testifies to our capability to deliver great value."  Iqbal Khoory, Senior Vice President - Procurement, DP World 

“Potential clients are including more questions about procurement performance in the tendering process.  The bigger the client organisation, the more importance they attach to our procurement processes.” – Graham Anderson, Procurement Director, Dalkia plc

Achieving credibility

“The only real test of our success is by benchmarking against industry best practice – and who better to independently undertake this than CIPS” – Derek Faulkner, Vice President Global Procurement EMEA, American Express Services Europe

“Certification provides real recognition of the professionalism of the Vodafone supply chain management team and is a seal of approval from our industry” – Kendall Smith, Head of Supply Chain, Vodafone

“We can be confident that council purchasing procedures had now been benchmarked successfully against recognised best practice” – Andy Davies, Head of Procurement, Surrey County Council

“We are delighted to receive CIPS Certification.  It will demonstrate to our customers that HP can provide high-quality, competitive third-party solutions to complement our core HP products and services.” – Bill Lascelles, UK & Ireland Resource Planning and Sourcing Manager, Hewlett Packard

“We think we are good, but the only way of knowing is to be scrutinised and benchmarked externally against the best.  The suppliers we deal with and our clients need to know that we are robust in terms of our systems, processes, policies and people management.” – Guy Strafford, Client Services Director, buyingTeam 

Gaining recognition

“One of the reasons we went for CIPS Certification is to enable us to say “look how good we are at what we do.”  Certification is a great story for us and good for our salespeople to tell their customers.  It’s very exciting.” – Emma Richardson, Procurement Manager, Microsoft UK

“We have long operated with a set of robust policies and procedures, but this award gives the external recognition our policy people deserve and we will use it to best effect in our internal marketing.” – Meryl Bushel, Chief Procurement Officer, BT

“This (achieving CIPS Certification) is a significant step towards greater transparency and accountability in the management of radioactive waste in the UK.” – Chris Murray, Managing Director, Nirex

“(Certification) allows our procurement function to have a greater influence throughout the business to boost bottom-line profitability.” – Paul Spanswick, Chief Financial Officer, Nomura International

“(Certification) helped to increase awareness of the contribution made by purchasing at the highest level of our organisation.” – Nick Wildgoose, Procurement Director, Zurich Financial Services

 

Contact us

For more information on how CIPS Corporate Certification can help your organisation work towards world-class procurement process excellence, contact us now

Europe: +44 (0)1780 756777; Australasia: +61 3 9629 6000; Africa: +27 12 345 6177; MENA: +971 (0) 4327 7348