Public Procurement: how KLB’s outsourced buying desk drives your performance

Time-consuming procedures, budget pressure, limited internal resources, a need to refocus teams on high-value strategic tasks...

What if outsourcing became a driver of agility rather than a constraint?

For over 10 years, KLB has offered a proven model of an outsourced public procurement desk, designed to combine performance, compliance, and simplicity.

A practical answer to the everyday challenges of public buyers

Building a procurement strategy, launching a tender, drafting the Request for Proposal (RFP), ensuring traceability of decisions, meeting legal deadlines... These tasks are at the heart of public procurement. Yet they are time-consuming, regardless of the procedure, and often come at the expense of the strategic role of the procurement function.

At KLB, we’ve developed a model specifically tailored to the realities of the public sector: an outsourced procurement desk.The idea? To provide a multidisciplinary external team (on- or off-site) to manage procurement procedures on your behalf, in a fully controlled, monitored, and compliant framework.

This model was launched in 2011 with the procurement department of one of our major public-sector clients. It quickly evolved to include a unit-based pricing structure (based on a clear, detailed pricing schedule) and real-time monitoring tools.The result: every task is defined, costed, traceable, and secured for the full duration of the contract.

The KLB procurement desk: tailored and compliant outsourcing

Our buying desk is based in our offices ("outdoor" mode) and operates on behalf of multiple public-sector clients: government bodies, local authorities, state-owned companies, public institutions, and more broadly, any organization subject to the French Public Procurement Code.

It is staffed with experienced public procurement professionals, specialist legal experts, and sector-specific consultants (e.g. construction, professional services, IT).

This structure allows us to guarantee:

• Full regulatory compliance, in line with the core principles of public procurement: equal treatment, open access, and procedural transparency

• Flexible support, tailored to the entire procurement process or selected phases

• Ongoing capitalization of best practices, through multi-client benchmarking

• Workload smoothing thanks to a shared-resource model

• Clear real-time project monitoring via collaborative tools

[Case Study] Turning around a failed tender: a success story in the transport sector

In 2023, a public-sector transport procurement team had to launch a particularly complex tender: 33 lots of industrial supplies were to be sourced and awarded.However, the first attempt was a failure — only 9 lots received bids, due to insufficient market response.

Faced with this critical situation, the client called on us to take over.We completely redesigned the procurement strategy, restructured the tender documentation, and supported internal prescribers — many of whom were unfamiliar with the regulatory formalism — to secure each step of the process.We also carried out extensive supplier engagement, helping vendors understand public tender requirements and overcome their hesitation to participate.

The outcome was clear: 24 of the 33 lots were awarded after relaunch. The documentation was clearer, communication was smoother, and both client and suppliers reported high satisfaction — all within the required timeline.

A scalable approach for all types of public organizations

The buying desk model we’ve developed at KLB is designed to suit both well-structured procurement departments and smaller organizations with limited resources.It enables each client to retain full control over their strategic vision, while delegating the operational management of procurement procedures to a responsive, expert team that ensures compliance at every stage.

We handle the entire operational process, including:

• Upstream sourcing and benchmarking, if needed

• Support in defining the need and drafting the procurement strategy

• Drafting the Request for Proposal (RFP)/Tender Documents

• Managing Q&A exchanges with candidates

• Conducting the offer evaluation

• Writing award and analysis reports

• Providing advanced reporting, for precise and transparent project tracking

Our monitoring tools allow each client to track real-time progress and adjust timelines or priorities as needed.

Because expectations evolve, so do we. We’re now partnering with tools and solutions that use artificial intelligence to automate the evaluation of technical and ESG criteria in proposals.This innovation enhances the objectivity of our assessments — even in high-pressure or time-constrained contexts — ensuring a competitive, high-quality outcome every time.

Ready to talk?

Launching a new tender? Need ad hoc support? Want to integrate ESG objectives without adding complexity?

Our procurement desk can help you save time, gain visibility, and increase peace of mind. We tailor our service to your priorities, your timeline, and your procurement volume.

Contact us today to discuss your needs.

_ Sarah FADHLI, Public Procurement Desk Coordinator at KLB