Preliminary Market Engagement for the provision of Social Care Provider Management Software

Warwickshire County Council is exploring the potential commissioning of a Social Care Provider Relationship Management Tool to strengthen how the Council engages with, understands and manages its local social care provider market. The Council works with a wide range of social care providers across different service areas, including regulated and non-regulated provision.

Effective provider relationship management is essential to supporting market sustainability, understanding provider capacity and pressures, improving communication, monitoring risks, and ensuring that commissioned services continue to meet local needs and statutory responsibilities. At present, information about providers, quality, performance, risks, engagement activity and market intelligence may be held across different systems, teams and processes.

This can make it more difficult to maintain a single, consistent view of provider relationships and to use information proactively to support commissioning, contract management, quality assurance and market shaping activity. The Council is therefore interested in understanding whether there are digital tools available that could help provide a more coordinated, efficient and intelligence-led approach to provider relationship management.

The purpose of this preliminary market engagement is to understand the range of solutions available, how they are currently being used in social care or comparable sectors, the extent to which they could meet the Council’s requirements, likely implementation considerations, support models, interoperability, data security arrangements, and indicative costs. This engagement will help the Council assess the maturity of the market, identify potential delivery options, understand any risks or constraints, and inform whether a future procurement exercise would be appropriate.