The buying company (HealthcareCo) is one of the world’s largest and most broadly based healthcare companies with products spanning both pharmaceutical and consumer products. The service provider (Supplier) is a global leader in quality-of-life services and is considered one of the top 25 employers in the world. Their relationship spans more than 25 years.

In 2013, the HealthcareCo set out to create a more “strategic” approach, by shifting to an integrated facilities management (IFM) solution.  It expanded locations across ten countries in the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region, including the United Kingdom, Italy, Germany and Belgium. From a commercial perspective, the parties shifted risk to the Supplier for performance against pre-defined service level agreements (SLAs) at a set budget, and signed a GMP (gross maximum price) performance-based pricing model.

In the spring of 2015, with the current contract nearing its expiration date, HealthcareCo beganto consider how it could further mature its outsourcing efforts and was in the process of creating a Request for Proposal to go back to the market.  It was during this period that HealthcareCo stumbled across the work of the University of Tennessee on the Vested business model. The parties engaged a Vested Center of Excellence to conduct a Deal Review to see if restructuring their existing agreement to a win-win Vested business model could unleash the desired innovation HealthcareCo was seeking.

The Deal Review was a turning point for both parties. It was clear the business model was ripe for reinvention. Ultimately, for the next nine months, the parties set out to totally restructure their relationship and contract, using the UT’s Vested methodology. The companies worked with a Vested Center of Excellence to provide coaching and legal support during their Vested journey to transform their partnership. After a series of 20 facilitated workshops HealthcareCo and Supplier signed Europe’s first Vested Agreement for Integrated Facilities Management (IFM) in February 2017. The contract spanned 153 sites in 29 countries across EMEA, and included 11 core services and 49 sub-services.  It involved 2000 Supplier employees supporting 44,000 Buyer employees in 32 languages.

By 2020 the parties had a complete turnaround in the health of the relationship, with a formal Health Check rating score increasing from only 58% in 2016 to over 90% after making the shift under the Vested agreement.