Objectives
The Council had a plan and long-term strategy to develop end-to-end electronic procurement with the ultimate goal of managing spend across the Council. Inefficient processes, compliance issues and limited transparency meant managing spend and ordering was difficult with minimal ability to track orders. Full purchase spend visibility, cost savings and process efficiencies were top of the agenda.
The Council also wanted to take more control of its sourcing processes by building on existing electronic systems to further streamline and improve processes and procedures to make the experience of doing business with the Council as efficient, easy and uncomplicated as possible.
Caerphilly CBC was an early adopter of eProcurement and has played a prominent and leading role in the development of eProcurement solutions across the Welsh Public Sector. Over the past 20 years the Council has embraced new technology developments that have become available through its partnership working with Proactis.
How Proactis helps
The Council originally implemented Proactis Purchase-to-Pay to consolidate the numerous ordering procedures and formats to capture spend across the organisation. All orders are sent to suppliers electronically and an increasing number of invoices are being received electronically.
Having used Proactis for many years, it elected to utilise additional functionality available, including contract and supplier management, and adopted the collaborative procurement portal powered by the Proactis sourcing solution. This has extended visibility of contract opportunities for suppliers, while extending governance, compliance and auditability for the Council.
95% of the Council’s procurement processes are managed via Proactis Sourcing, providing extensive transparency, with built-in procedures and controls which are aligned to pre-determined authorisation criteria. The Council worked with Proactis to create streamlined, end-to-end procurement processes, including spend management and control, sourcing, contract management and supplier relationship management.
Benefits
The Council’s Procurement function has developed and implemented a complete end-to-end strategy which is supported by the use of Proactis solutions. Systems and processes have been developed as dynamic information highways with data securely flowing into and out of the organisation, providing all parties with timely information that helps make all business interactions more efficient.
Supplier engagement has also vastly improved. The Council has in excess of 18,000 suppliers registered, and the Proactis solutions have ensured cost savings and process efficiencies for the Council whilst streamlining processes for it’s suppliers.
The whole procurement process has been well adopted across the Council with over 800 users. Procurement is now standardised, providing cost savings, process efficiencies, compliance and the all-important visibility.