Gearing Up to Benefit — Cancer Research UK Case Study
Cancer Research UK’s COO on how the charity is trying to find a way to capitalise on supplier relationships
As with all organisations, budget holders have a responsibility to spend money wisely. When it is a charity, and the funding has come from donations, it is imperative.
Cancer Research UK is the world’s leading cancer charity, dedicated to saving and improving lives through research, influence and information. Across its centres and institutes, more than 4,000 scientists, doctors and nurses work together on lab studies and clinical trials to discover more about cancer and unlock new ways to prevent, diagnose and treat it.
In the past 50 years, the charity’s pioneering work has helped double cancer survival in the UK.
At its centre sits the charity’s operational core, headed by COO Angela Morrison. Her remit spans finance, including procurement, technology, HR and transformation.
A Shared Mission
All of the charity’s around 4,000 employees and 25,000 volunteers are united by the same ultimate goal:
“We’re all here to continue our life-saving work and make progress for those affected by cancer,” says Morrison.
Third party services at Cancer Research UK cover annual expenditure in excess of £100 million, and supplier management is handled locally. The organisation has some significant, long-standing supplier relationships, particularly in the marketing, technology, property and energy categories. These are managed directly by budget holders, supported by a central procurement team.
“We are yet to establish consistent supplier management. We’re not at a level of strategic relationship management across the organisation at this point,” says Morrison. “This is what we are working on.”
State of Flux is currently reviewing the as-is function and making best practice recommendations for change, as well as assisting with tools and templates to support the transformation. Here, Morrison discusses the opportunities ahead.
Supplier Management 101
Morrison joined the charity three years ago following executive roles in retail at Debenhams, Direct Line Group, Sainsbury’s and Asda. Her background is in technology and change, and this, alongside the charity’s new CTO, guides their approach to building more consistent supplier management.
“I’ve delivered big system changes in the past, and it’s always about the relationships. There will always be downtimes where you have to dig deep and work through things together. Between myself and our CTO, we know what works for us and where we want to get to within technology.”
By this, she means:
Developing a hierarchy of management to ensure the right relationships are in place
Setting a regular cadence of supplier meetings
Aligning goals with supplier partners to achieve shared outcomes
Creating the ability to jointly track progress
“Our supplier management is inconsistent. Some parts of the organisation are doing it, but it’s not across the whole. We currently provide limited central support.”
“Our maturity needs to improve so we can hold people to account in how we manage and monitor suppliers. Our aim is to see a level of consistency and access to performance data, and do it collectively so everyone across our diverse organisation gets the benefit.”
ESG Value-Add
As a charity, Cancer Research UK typically receives discounted third-sector rates. While Morrison sees these as a benefit, she is also focused on boosting value-add.
Her role includes overseeing the charity’s environmental, social and governance (ESG) agenda. Strategic supplier management can help enable suppliers to add value to their own ESG goals, particularly the social dimension.
“We’re an organisation that has ‘social’ in its core purpose,” she says. “Our vision is to bring about a world where everybody can lead longer, better lives, free from the fear of cancer. We exist to beat cancer, and beating cancer means beating it for everyone.”
While some supplier relationships already deliver value-add successfully, there is no formal process for identifying and exploring such opportunities.
“The bit beyond paid value is potentially very large for us and our suppliers, but it’s not easy to execute,” says Morrison.
“We know our suppliers are keen to support us over and above the work they do.” After a simple ask, more than 50 representatives from key suppliers recently joined Morrison in a Race for Life run, the charity’s flagship fundraising event series across the UK. Many doubled their teams’ fundraising, and one is now considering sponsoring another charity event.
“The will is there, we just need to find a more formal way to tap into it.”
Sometimes organisations offer “free” work, but it may not be what the charity actually needs. Likewise, the charity may request something that the supplier is not able or willing to provide.
The challenge, Morrison says, is bridging that gap. She is considering either an individual or a structured solution to manage these exchanges.
“It’s not free to do this work. It requires focus to do it with a particular lens. That’s the challenge. There are definitely offerings we could surface out there, we just need to figure out how to do it effectively.”
Procurement with Purpose
Procurement is still largely framed around a “go to market with a requirement for a piece of work” approach, rather than one that engages suppliers in a way that’s mutually beneficial.
“The process of matching what you need with what another organisation is prepared to do pro bono is more complicated than simply buying a service. But that’s the bit that many companies would like to do with us. Working out how to do it effectively is the opportunity.”
Partnering and Compromise
The charity’s long-term strategy is built around five pillars: Discover, Translate, Engage, Partner and Sustain.
Discover and Translate focus on improving research and turning discoveries into new prevention, tests and treatments
Engage covers outreach to supporters and suppliers
Partner provides leverage in research and income through corporate partners
Sustain, Morrison’s remit, focuses on finance, HR, technology and ESG
On the day of the interview, Morrison was headed to the official opening of the Cancer Research UK National Biomarker Centre in Manchester. It is housed in the newly rebuilt Paterson Building, which was destroyed by fire in 2017. The centre will help detect cancer earlier, when more treatment options are available.
Elsewhere, the charity has co-founded a global research initiative with the National Cancer Institute in the US. Through Cancer Grand Challenges, international teams receive up to $25 million in funding to tackle the toughest cancer problems. Projects already underway include research into childhood solid tumours, early-onset cancers and cancer inequities.
Now the goal is to apply what works in these partnerships to its supplier relationships.
“For us, it’s the quandary of how to get and build those supplier relationships as a charity. Procurement requires relationships as the top lever. It’s not just about price. We want good prices, but more than that, we want the added value of a strong relationship that leads to mutual benefit.”
More Than a Century of Discoveries
Over the past century, Cancer Research UK and its predecessors have made major contributions to the fight against cancer. Achievements include:
Contributing to chemotherapy drugs used by 120,000 NHS patients annually
Nobel Prize-winning research into cell division
Advancements in genetic mapping and immune system understanding
Studies on DNA mutations and environmental triggers like tobacco
Discovery of the HPV-cervical cancer link
Support for prostate cancer clinical trials
Improved childhood cancer survival rates
Development of the UK’s breast screening programme
Pioneering research in radiotherapy
Uncovering hormone-cancer links and treatment pathways
