How Proactis helped
A team from the University looked into a number of solutions and Proactis was the best fit for its requirements. The University was already using Proactis’ Marketplace solution, and a relationship had built up over the years. It was a natural fit.
”We very much like how Proactis works, as a technology partner, rather than providing individual tools,” stated Ian. “Using Proactis’ expertise, we wanted to be as close to the front of the trend in terms of technology, with automated and digitised processes, as much as possible.”
The Proactis solution has streamlined and automated supplier relationship management (SRM), contract management and eProcurement processes. SRM is the area that people from across the University come across most, for example, when they want to add new suppliers. The solution has removed many manual processes, so staff can focus on more strategic, value-add tasks.
“We were very keen to have a system in place that was as user-friendly as possible,” continued Ian. “How we conduct a lot of commercial activity at the University is devolved throughout the organisation, so having something that non-Procurement specialists could access and be able to use easily was key. For example, users need to easily view contracts that might affect their area, or view suppliers that they may wish to use. Being able to utilise technology to not only provide a strategic view but also control areas throughout our supply chain, particularly through the onboarding and selection process, was really important. The ability to build in further questions around things like modern slavery, around data protection and be able to tweak that ourselves as our list of requirements grew was really important to make sure that we stay current.”
Due to the success of the Source-to-Contract solution, the University subsequently looked into what could be done about its Accounts Payable processes. A lot of paper and manual keying was involved, and, due to the relationship with Proactis, the University chose Invoice Capture to digitise the process. The Finance Team is now able to capture invoices, convert non-electronic data into eInvoices, validate accuracy by checking for a PO, duplicates and a valid supplier, and then transfer them into the finance system for matching and payment approval.
“It’s been really important to be able to work in partnership with Proactis. We didn’t adopt all these solutions at the same time. We started with Marketplace, then Source-to-Contract, and then Invoice Capture. In order to do this, working in partnership with Proactis was vital as without understanding what it was, and still is, that we’re trying to achieve as an organisation makes it much harder to make sure we’ve got the right solutions in place.”