The NHS Spend Comparison Service (SCS) is a vital tool for any NHS trust looking to enhance its procurement strategy.

By providing a holistic view of procurement activities, enabling detailed benchmarking, and fostering collaboration, the service helps trusts to make more informed decisions, achieve cost savings, and improve overall procurement efficiency. With the added advantage of generative artificial intelligence (AI) and in-house analytical capabilities, the service is not just a tool, but a comprehensive solution for modern NHS procurement needs.

By consolidating purchase order (PO), accounts payable (AP), and NHS Supply Chain (TR21) transaction data, the service enables trusts, integrated care systems, and NHS England to compare prices, identify supplier fragmentation, assess procurement efficiencies, and benchmark against national and regional peers.

The service helps procurement teams make data-driven decisions, improve commercial outcomes, and identify cost-saving opportunities while supporting strategic collaboration across NHS providers.

Who manages the NHS Spend Comparison Service?

The service was refreshed in May 2023, with additional data and tools to further support NHS procurement teams to deliver the best value for the taxpayer.

NHS England has changed the legal basis for data collection (FutureNHS login required), reflecting the legislative changes under the Health and Care Act 2022. From 1 April, data submission for NHS providers became mandatory. This means that NHS trusts and foundation trusts not currently submitting data will need to submit relevant purchase order and accounts payable data from April 2024 onwards.

Development of the NHS Spend Comparison Service is a deliverable of the Central Commercial Function (CCF), established in July 2022 to help ensure that the NHS is making the best use of public money and reducing procurement and supply chain costs.

The Data and Tech team within CCF (also managing Atamis adaptation) is led by Mr Nils van den Winkel, Associate Director for Commercial Systems, Data and Insight, while the Spend Comparison Service project is managed by Mr Levente Fazekas, Head of Commercial Data Insight and Mr Ajay Vaidya, Commercial Data Insight Lead.

How does the Spend Comparison Service increase data visibility across the NHS?

The Spend Comparison Service enhances NHS data visibility by bringing together procurement data from over 200 NHS organisations into a single, standardised platform. It enables procurement professionals to analyse trends, benchmark pricing, track supplier performance, and identify inefficiencies across different spend categories.

By reducing data silos, the service provides a clearer view of national and local procurement patterns, facilitating better decision-making, collaborative procurement, and more transparent, efficient spending across the NHS.

Data

The service is currently comprised of the following data collections:

• purchase order
• accounts payable
• TR21 Supply Chain transacted data
• national catalogues (Supply Chain and high cost tariff devices, SSDP catalogue)
• integrated care board and NHS England transaction data

Trusts that are Shard Business Services (SBS) or NEP Cloud members do not need to submit their data as these are pulled automatically from their systems. TR21 and catalogue data is loaded centrally by Supply Chain.

The data gathered from the collections is processed, normalised, cleansed and enriched, then displayed via analytical dashboards. The data is available to a variety of NHS procurement, finance and clinical users.

Purpose

The Spend Comparison Service:

• help providers across integrated care systems to reduce price variation and identify area for collaboration

• helps address product variation in clinical specialities and improve the quality of their services
• helps providers maximise their use of resources and become more efficient as required by the provider licence
• supports an approach to benchmarking for regulatory purposes
• informs strategic programmes led by Getting It Right First Time (GIRFT), NHS England, NHS Supply Chain and the MedTech directorate in the Department of Health and Social Care
• informs NHS national aggregation initiatives such as nationally contracted products 

Background and funding

The service is a uniquely low-cost, low-overhead solution that continues to deliver real value for minimal outlay. It is a free-to-use platform.

Since different users need different questions answered through different analytical means, a range of complementary analytical modules have been created based on these different use cases. Each of these analytical dashboards under the service’s product umbrella meets a specific set of use cases and has a specific target audience.

The service was introduced in August 2019 with an analytical dashboard that enables product price benchmarking based on submitted purchase order data and NHS Supply Chain transactional data. In October 2021, a new standalone analytical dashboard was launched as part of the service that enables spend analysis based on submitted accounts payable data. In May 2023, NHS England launched a new comprehensive platform, which enables additional savings opportunities and cost pressures to be identified. This platform is a single sign-on solution linking user access with their organisational credentials making this a secure solution.

Data submissions and resubmissions

All NHS trusts (acute, specialists, mental health, community and ambulance) are required to submit their purchase order and accounts payable data (unless they are SBS or NEP Cloud members).

• My trust is not taking part in the Spend Comparison Service. How do I start participating in the service?

Most trust already submit data. In the unlikely event that your trust is not participating, and you are not an SBS or NEP Cloud customer then you will need to start loading AP and PO data to the Spend Comparison Service.

Registration and access for data submission is managed through the Strategic Data Collections Service (SDCS). Data submitters can register for a user account and obtain the ability to submit PO and AP data for their organisations. NEP Cloud or SBS customers can’t register as their data is loaded automatically.

The NHS Spend Comparison Service data collections rely on submissions of full datasets across spend categories for the respective time periods, not merely a subset of data for specific categories.

Purchase order data is collected on a weekly basis (but can also be submitted monthly) and account payable data is collected monthly.

PO submission should cover a full week (or a full month if monthly submission is preferred) by PO date and AP submission should cover a full month by payment Date. A January submission for example should contain all data for payment dates between 1 December and 31 December for AP or PO Dates between 1 December and 31 December for PO submissions.

Manual submissions (ie non SBS and NEP customers) are loaded into submission windows, which open and close on set dates.

For incorrect submissions the relevant submission window needs to be opened and the corrected data to be resubmitted. This can be requested from the SDCS team by the data submitter.

Data processing

The raw submitted data is processed, normalised and enriched by NHS England according to a range of data integration workflows, which have been developed and refined with participating NHS organisations. The outline of these data integration workflows can be accessed by participating authorities via the Central Commercial Function Hub (FutureNHS login required).

The resulting data is stored in a commercial data warehouse, which forms the foundation for the analytical modules that make up the service.

Benefits of contributing to and using the Spend Comparison Service

The analytical dashboards enable users to view submitted data and complementary data from third party sources in several different formats. This allows for different methods of analysis, including but not limited to:

• identifying invoice spend by normalised suppliers and unified categories across multiple trusts, offering a high-level financial overview of total non-pay spend across all categories, including areas that may not typically go through procurement systems, such as agency staff, estates, and utilities. The AP module provides integrated care systems (ICSs) and procurement hubs with a “helicopter view” of their total spend, supporting collaborative procurement planning by enabling trusts to identify common suppliers and shared categories across regions and ICSs and to understand their market share and purchasing power with certain suppliers
• price benchmarking: comparing prices within the NHS market, direct from supplier and through different supply routes to understand the most cost-effective supply route to achieve savings and avert cost pressures. Price benchmarking allows us to compare prices within the NHS market, adjusted for spend, ensuring that we are getting the best value for our money
• efficiency benchmarking: assessing and improving procurement efficiency and benchmarking product standardisation and supplier rationalisation. Efficiency benchmarking helps us assess how well we are performing in terms of procurement processes
• price inflation/decrease trends analysis helps trusts identify price increases and potential cost pressures for specific product groups and categories
• internal price benchmarking between direct and Supply Chain prices, comparing prices paid directly and through Supply Chain for the same products
• identify potential missed opportunities on high-cost tariff devices (SSDP)
• supply straddle analysis: identifying supply of identical categories from different supply routes
• national product detail search using market data – find out what a good price is for a certain product based on all NHS prices
• trend analysis: use historical data to identify trends and predict future spending patterns in various product or service-based categories

Robustly identify products purchased directly by your trust that are available at lower prices through NHS Supply Chain

Registration and access

Comprehensive Spend Comparison Service platform

For the comprehensive single single-on platform, please sign up using this form. Please only register if you work for the NHS or for the Department of Health and Social Care and have a work email. Access requests for external companies and private individuals won’t be not approved.

New users are approved on Fridays and a welcome email is sent to them. Once signed up and approved, users can use their organisational login just like with other Microsoft products such as Outlook or Teams, there is no separate username or password for the service.

Access is managed by your organisation and your local organisational information governance and IT rules apply around information sharing. Once approved users can use this link to access the service.

Standalone finance dashboard

There is a standalone account payable non pay spend dashboard using Spend Comparison Service data in the NHS England library, this is not commercially sensitive so can be accessed using OKTA login through the NHS England application library. This standalone finance dashboard is available at Spend Comparison Service – accounts payable spend analytics. This will contain the same data as the AP module in the comprehensive, single sign on version (see above) but will not contain the commercially sensitive pricing data.

The use of the Spend Comparison Service is governed by the terms and conditions highlighted in the end user access agreement.

Training and guidance

There is a range of training videos and guidance documents available for Spend Comparison Service users.

You can access guidance documentation directly from the tool as well as a wider range of ‘how to’ videos on the Central Commercial Function Best Practice Hub (FutureNHS login required).

New users are encouraged to watch the Spend Comparison Service quick start video series (FutureNHS login required), designed to provide them with a foundational understanding of the system’s key functionalities. These 7 videos offer a concise yet comprehensive introduction to the essential features of the service, empowering you to navigate the platform with confidence and leverage data-driven insights for procurement efficiency and cost savings.

We are holding monthly User Group Forum calls for regular users, based on invitation and user statistics. There are regular Spend Comparison Service workshops organised for groups of trusts or integrated care systems based on demand, please contact england.ccf.datatech1@nhs.net if you would like to organise a workshop at your organisation. The service has monthly clinic calls with more active user groups discussing practical, local questions and suggestions.

Currently we are not organising national workshops as these events attracted too many users with diverse needs so instead, we focus on local and regional workshops where questions and issues can be discussed in an effective format.

If you have any specific queries about how to use the tool that are not answered in the general guidance available or if you wish to arrange for an integrated care system or region-based training session, please contact england.ccf.datatech1@nhs.net

If you have any specific queries about how to submit data, please follow the guidance and/or contact details on the Strategic Data Collection Service webpage.