Legendary investment lands major NHS contract

The AIM-traded firm said Shelford Group will deploy VS's cloud-based module catalogue management solution, part of The Edge, providing a solution to what Lord Carter described as one of the major issues affecting the NHS.

Shelford Group comprises 10 NHS multi-specialty academic healthcare organisations, employing more than 100,000 people and has a turnover of over £10bn, making up over 13% of acute trusts' turnover across England.

VS, through The Edge platform, aims to support significant savings over the next five years through supply chain optimisation and procurement process efficiencies, Legendary said.

“The Shelford Group recognise the importance of adopting common systems to drive process efficiency both for our hospitals and our supply chain,” said David Lawson, chief procurement officer at Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust.

“We wanted to embed best practice by replicating the best in retail.

“We need to deliver at pace, so we have adopted VS, the same digital platform used by some of the UK's largest retailers to deliver both a common catalogue solution and a platform for future process improvement.”

Andrew Mills, CEO of VS, said the company was delighted to be part of “revolutionising procurement performance” with trusts across the UK.

“Lord Carter has laid out ambitious targets for the NHS, which we can support through the VS Edge system.

“Supply chain optimisation is crucial, not only for the trusts' benefit but also the patients.

“VS will use The Edge to replicate the efficient and agile systems of our retail clients in order for the successful result to be rolled out across the NHS.”

Zafar Karim, Executive Chairman of Legendary, pointed out that in just a few short years, Virtualstock has gone from winning a landmark contract with Tesco to being adopted by other leading retailers, with momentum in the sector continuing to grow.

“Significantly, Virtualstock's sector agnostic nature enabled it to win its first NHS client just over a year ago, and now, its systems have been cited as ‘exemplary’ and are to be deployed in the NHS by the Shelford Group further afield.

“Legendary's strategy of searching for deep value, its patient opportunism and its proactive investment strategy is now starting to pay off.”