Over a Year of Time Back for Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust
231.7 working days of procurement capacity released across 206 projects
Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust (GSTT) delivers care to more than three million patients each year. With over 23,000 staff and £3.2bn in turnover, it is one of the largest and most complex healthcare organisations in the UK. The procurement teams are central to whether programmes deliver, whether money is well spent, and whether healthcare services can meet patient needs.
A large proportion of the procurement workload is labour-intensive and admin-heavy — tender packs, evaluation frameworks, and award communications — most of it done manually and duplicated across projects. With teams operating within strict regulatory frameworks requiring consistency and a clear audit trail, senior procurement professionals were spending a disproportionate amount of time on administration rather than strategic decisions. In a system already under financial and operational pressure, this is a structural problem.
The challenge was not to work faster. It was to rebalance how procurement time was spent, without compromising compliance or quality.
GSTT partnered with Dotted Line, EcoVate’s AI-driven platform that manages projects and procurement end-to-end, from early planning through to contract award, in a single structured workflow. By automating the most repeatable elements of the procurement lifecycle GSTT could reduce preparation time while improving consistency.
The core purpose remained the same throughout: standardise where possible and save senior judgement for where it matters. Implementation was embedded directly into live procurements, onboarding was practical, and all documentation remained fully editable and reviewable. This ensured teams retained control and confidence throughout.
Between July 2025 and April 2026: 206 procurement projects created and managed through the platform. 282 procurement documents generated across five document types. 231.7 working days of procurement capacity released. 35 days saved in April 2026 alone, the strongest month on record.
That capacity was redirected into strategic sourcing decisions, supplier engagement, evaluation quality and stronger commercial outcomes. Rather than being seen as a compliance exercise, procurement became a strategic lever.
“Adopting Dotted Line has been one of the most impactful productivity changes we have made in recent years. In twelve months, it has released 231 working days of capacity across 206 procurement projects — capacity we have redirected into the work that actually moves the dial for the Trust: strategic sourcing, supplier engagement, and stronger evaluation. Critically, none of this has come at the cost of governance. Our outputs are more consistent, our audit trail is more robust, and our error rate in a busy team has reduced. Dotted Line has genuinely increased the strategic capacity of my team — and has become a meaningful part of our procurement transformation.”
— Pia Larsen, Chief Procurement Officer, Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust
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