“Excellence in Business Award”

The Education Procurement Service (EPS) has been announced as the 2020 winner of the “Excellence in Business Award” in this year’s awards edition of the Public Sector Magazine.  EPS Director & Head of Sourcing Education, Philip Gurnett, was delighted to receive this award on behalf of EPS.

The Public Sector Magazine is a prestigious publication, which is distributed to, all departments in the public sector, semi-state bodies and civil service. The circulation is 175,000 copies and there is an online version circulated to all public servants of 326,000.

Each year the Public Sector Magazine invites key public sector companies to nominate organisations and individuals who demonstrate excellence in their field.

Nominees are judged by a panel of experts drawn from previous award winners and representatives from a diversity of sectors who discuss and select the recipients for each award. The top three scoring nominations in each category are shortlisted with the highest scoring nomination as the winner.

The award winner’s edition of the magazine acknowledges and highlights those organisations, companies and individuals that exemplify the best in supplying services to the Public Sector.  Full article is available to download: Public Sector Awards Magazine

Are you Brexit Ready?

The UK has always been a very strong trading partner for Ireland and Brexit will have a severe impact on Irish businesses operations. The UK is Ireland’s largest source of imported goods, and second largest export market. Ireland is the UK’s fifth largest export market and the ninth largest source of our imported goods.

EPS want to ensure that our customers will continue to get the service they are accustomed to, and we will be reaching out to our supplier base over the coming weeks to understand their position in terms of managing Brexit.

EPS is currently liaising with our Framework suppliers to update where they are in their Brexit preparation under the following areas:

• Risk of potential logistic delays
• Continuity of supply strategy
• Guaranteeing continuity of product supply for the long and short term
• Details of dedicated Irish stock locations
• Supplying shipments from both the UK and alternative locations (Europe, Asia etc.)
• Customer input required regarding stock-holding levels/turnaround to plan and optimise material/product held in various facilities
• Anticipated increase in orders, order limits and greater demand for safety stock purchasing.
• How to confirm forecast requirements with supplier Account Managers

EPS has written to all our Framework suppliers to ascertain what practical steps and innovative solutions they are adopting to help guarantee supply to our customer base as we approach year-end. EPS is also appointing a Brexit point-of-contact in their Buying team as we anticipate this project will require our attention well into next year.

For further information, there are many supports available through the 31 Local Enterprise Offices, Enterprise Ireland, Intertrade Ireland and Skillnet Ireland to help businesses examine their Brexit exposure.

Other useful resources can be found at the following:

https://ogp.gov.ie/brexit/

www.revenue.ie/brexit

https://enterprise.gov.ie/en/Publications/Brexit-Readiness-Checklist.html

https://www.prepareforbrexit.com/strategic-sourcing/

https://www.nsai.ie/brexit/brexit-factsheets/

https://www.hsa.ie/eng/Your_Industry/Chemicals/