Cherwell District Council upgrades to Mercell Tendering to strengthen end-to-end procurement management
Cherwell District Council has decided to upgrade from the CTM platform to Mercell Tendering, expanding its digital procurement capabilities and moving to a more connected way of working across the procurement lifecycle.
Serving communities across northern Oxfordshire, Cherwell District Council delivers essential public services including planning, housing and waste management for towns such as Banbury, Bicester and Kidlington. Like many local authorities, the council’s procurement function needs to manage a broad range of purchasing activity while maintaining strong governance, clear auditability and compliance with evolving UK procurement requirements.
Moving beyond point functionality
While their current setup supported core tendering activity, the council wanted to reduce reliance on manual approvals and workarounds, improve visibility across procurement activity, and create a more consistent approach to managing tenders, contracts and planning. Fragmented processes and limited end-to-end oversight can slow down procurement, make reporting harder, and increase risk when information sits across multiple tools or spreadsheets.
Mercell Tendering addresses these challenges by bringing key phases of procurement into one end-to-end platform, connecting:
- Procurement Planning to structure upcoming request and strategically plan upcoming procurement
- Tendering to run compliant and transparent tender processes
- Contract Lifecycle Management to improve contract oversight, monitoring and governance
The result is a single workflow that helps replace manual steps with structured and automated processes, giving procurement teams better control and clearer insight across the lifecycle.
What Mercell Tendering enables for Cherwell
By adopting Procurement Planning, Tendering and Contract Lifecycle Management, Cherwell District Council will benefit from:
- Fewer manual approvals and less administrative effort through structured workflows and automation
- Improved visibility across procurement activity, including clearer oversight of contracts and spend
- More consistent, auditable processes to support governance and internal reporting
- Workflows aligned with UK procurement legislation, supporting compliance as requirements evolve
- Greater capacity through automation, enabling the team to manage more procurement activity with stronger oversight and less manual work
The council highlighted the value of connecting procurement processes into one platform.
We’re pleased to move to Mercell Tendering. The broader functionality and the automated workflows stood out, especially the ability to connect planning, tendering and contract management in one end-to-end process. It gives us better visibility and a more structured way of working across the procurement lifecycle.”
Looking ahead
This upgrade strengthens the council’s foundation for end-to-end digital procurement and supports a more proactive approach to planning, tendering and contract oversight. We look forward to continuing our partnership with Cherwell District Council as they further develop their procurement processes and build on the capabilities of Mercell Tendering.