The Dual Impact Collaboration Model (DICM) is the engine of the Pluggin Marketplace.
In an era where the Procurement Act 2023 demands greater transparency and tangible outcomes, the DICM Engine provides the digital infrastructure to transform passive social value obligations into active, high-impact community health, safety and resilience.
Currently connecting £2.1 billion in public procurement spend, the DICM Engine directly links supplier social value resources to the frontlines of community health, safety and resilience; a powerful "full-circle" solution that satisfies the strategic requirements of the Home Office, Ministry of Justice, and Cabinet Office.
Built with senior public buyers, the DICM Engine is specifically engineered to resolve the four primary friction points in the modern procurement cycle:
Primary Impact
Geographically, businesses supporting the local charities & social enterprises building healthier, safer and more resilient communities;
Secondary Impact
Primary Impact delivering secondary impact through reductions in costs of frontline policing, health & community care, and criminal justice.
1. Eliminating "Social Value Washing"
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The Issue: Suppliers often make vague, grandiose commitments during the tender stage that are difficult to verify or fail to materialize once the contract is signed.
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The DICM Resolution: By creating a Single Point of Truth, the engine connects every commitment to a specific, pre-validated community project. It replaces "marketing fluff" with a mandatory ledger of action, ensuring that what is promised in the bid is delivered on the ground.
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2. Solving the "Data Blindness" Crisis
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The Issue: Impact data is usually scattered across PDFs, spreadsheets, and annual reports, making it impossible for the Home Office or Cabinet Office to see a unified picture of national or regional impact.
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The DICM Resolution: As the UK’s first engine to automate data capture from the charity beneficiaries themselves, we centralize the "Value-to-Contract" link. This allows authorities to view the real-time social ROI of their entire procurement portfolio through a single, transparent dashboard.
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3. Ending the "Post-Award" Accountability Gap
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The Issue: Once a contract is awarded, public buyers often lack the resources to monitor whether a supplier is actually fulfilling their social obligations.
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The DICM Resolution: The engine automates the monitoring process. Because the data is captured directly from the frontline beneficiaries and fed back to the individual contract, the system provides an "always-on" audit trail. This reduces the administrative burden on procurement officers while maintaining 100% accountability.
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4. Aligning National Spend with Local Objectives
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The Issue: Large-scale "Tier-1" suppliers often struggle to connect with small, impactful local charities, leading to social value spend that feels "diluted" or disconnected from local needs.
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The DICM Resolution: The engine acts as a strategic bridge. It enables authorities to direct supplier resources into the specific health, safety, and resilience objectives of their local area. This ensures that national procurement budgets are actively strengthening the very communities the public authorities serve.
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The Bottom Line:
The DICM Engine transforms social value from a static compliance requirement into a dynamic, measurable, and highly visible process underpinning community health, safety and resilience. It allows the public sector to buy with confidence, using the DICM engine to automate how suppliers deliver social value into local objectives.
A Solution for Every Stakeholder
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The Cabinet Office: A standardized, transparent mechanism to ensure the Procurement Act’s goals for "maximizing social value" are met with integrity through a traceable audit trail.
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The Home Office & MoJ: A direct pipeline of private-sector funding into initiatives that prevent crime and build safer neighborhoods, with a single point of truth for reporting impact.
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Local Authorities: A simplified procurement process that guarantees social value is delivered locally and measured accurately, without manual data chasing.
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Tier-1 & SME Suppliers: A clear, de-risked path to winning more work by demonstrating authentic, contract-linked impact that stands up to the highest level of scrutiny.
CONNECT: Intelligent Strategic Alignment
The engine begins by aligning the corporate capabilities of suppliers with the hyper-local needs of public authorities.
- For Authorities: We provide a portal where Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs) and Councils can define their "Community Resilience Priorities."
- For Businesses: We map supplier bids to pre-validated community projects (VCSEs), ensuring that collaborations are relevant, legal, and ready for immediate deployment upon contract award.
CAPTURE: Real-Time Resource Mobilization
Once a contract is awarded, the DICM Engine captures the "Social Value Dividend."
- Resource Mapping: We track the flow of cash, professional expertise (pro-bono), and physical assets from the supplier to the community partner.
- Operational Integration: The engine acts as the formal ledger, recording the exact moment a social value commitment moves from a bid document into a real-world action.
MEASURE: The UK’s First "Beneficiary-to-Contract" Data Loop
The DICM Engine is the UK’s first engine designed to capture social value outputs directly from the charity beneficiaries themselves. We bridge the "accountability gap" by ensuring data flows from the grassroots back to the boardroom.
- The Single Point of Truth: For the first time, every piece of impact data—from a youth workshop session to a community safety initiative—is digitally tagged and connected back to the specific individual contract that funded it.
- Secondary Impact (Economic Return): We calculate the "cost-avoidance" for the public purse, demonstrating how contract-linked social value reduces the long-term demand on policing, healthcare, and social services.
PROMOTE: Transparent Validation and the "Visual Billboard"
Because our data is rooted in the "Single Point of Truth," the promotion of social value moves from corporate guesswork to verified fact.
- Verified Social Proof: By capturing the lived experience of charity beneficiaries, we provide suppliers and authorities with authentic narratives that are directly traceable to procurement spend.
- The HBS Advantage: Through our Headline Business Supporter (HBS) feature, suppliers receive continuous brand visibility within the community. This "Persistent Visual Billboard" is powered by real-time data, showing the public and stakeholders exactly how a specific contract is improving local lives.
The DICM Steering Group: From Co-Design to National Scale
A marketplace built by practitioners, for practitioners.
The DICM Engine was not built in a vacuum. Its architecture is the result of deep, early-stage engagement with the UK’s most senior police procurement leaders who recognised that the status quo of social value was failing to deliver regional results.
"The DICM Engine is the only platform where the buyers themselves are in the driving seat, ensuring that supplier obligations are never lost, but instead operationalised to meet our national strategic policing requirements."
DICM Steering Group Mission Statement
Many well-known suppliers were quick to join...
Businesses of all sizes operate their bids and contracts within the Pluggin Marketplace; many of the big brands joining first as they recognised the change being forged here and need for a business social value differentiation.
