We were commissioned by Dacorum Borough Council (DBC) to undertake a council wide commercial transformation programme that:

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• Creates and embeds a commercial strategy including creating a commercially minded culture

• Develops a programme and approach that sustainably supports the Council to generate income in future years;

• Identifies commercial opportunities and develops business cases for consideration by elected members and the successful delivery of several net-positive income generating initiatives

The year long project involved in depth work across all service areas to understand current activity and culture as well as the potential that exists. 

The work was split into three main stages as described by this infographic.

Stage 1 – A Commercial Sprint Review 

Working across the whole council to understand assets, capabilities and existing activity.  This was combined with our experience of what has been achieved by other local authorities and in other sectors to identify commercial opportunities.  These ranged from relatively small scale service based income generation initiatives through to major development.  In total 89 opportunities were identified and analysed at a high level.

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Stage 2 – Initial Business Cases 

We developed a template for the development of initial business cases.  17 of the opportunities identified in the sprint review were chosen in collaboration with the council to be developed in this way.  This stage involved more detailed analysis of the opportunity, the market, the cost of delivery, risks and other factors to give a fairly accurate understanding of the net financial benefit.  This identified an increased net annual revenue of £3.6m through the development of the opportunities.

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Stage 3 – Full Business Cases

We were asked to develop 7 full business cases with DBC writing another three.  These were all based on a full business case template we developed for the council based on the HM Treasury 5 Case Model.  The seven commercial opportunities identified in the business cases, which are now being implemented will create £2.2m/annum increased net revenue.  We also identified a further £2m in net revenue possible following a high level asset management review we also undertook.

These three stages were supplemented by cross cutting themes: writing a commercial strategy and training and development to develop commercial capability and create a commercial culture in order to give the council not only increased net revenue that exceeds their targets and their budget gap, but the internal capability to continue to drive the commercial transformation.

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