Making Supplier Payments Simple With Embedded P-cards
Summary
The Scottish Government (SG) have used Government Procurement Cards (GPC's) since 1998 and until 2008 awarded a contract to Barclaycard Business. The GPC or purchasing card (p-card) as it is commonly known, offers a simple method to purchase and pay for low value, high volume goods and services.
Background
The Government worked closely with Barclaycard to develop a procurement tool, using the eProcurement Scotl@nd Service (ePS), at the front end and an embedded purchasing card as a payment mechanism at the back end. 'Embedded' means the p-card details are stored on ePS for those purchases that are going to be paid by that method. The embedded p-card is allocated on an individual supplier basis to pay for repetitive, mainstream transactional purchases for goods and services. These are normally available through catalogue based, central contracts or framework agreements.
Benefits
The benefits to the SG of embedded p-cards through ePS include:
- Faster Payment -guaranteed payment to supplier in 4 days
- eduction in administrative costs for customers and suppliers
- Ease of use for both customers and suppliers
- Improvement in invoice accuracy
- Reduction in invoice queries
- Elimination of duplicate data entry and manual processing
- Fast and accurate data upload into Finance System
- Provides security and simplicity (encrypted e-mail functionality in place)
- Environmental benefits in saving paper
- Centralised electronic reports provide a clear audit trail
Achievements
The SG estimates savings of £10.00 per transaction on processing costs by using ePS with the embedded p-card rather than the SG's Finance System and BACS payment. At the current rate of approximately 800 transactions per month using the embedded card, the SG is saving £96,000 each year in process costs alone.
Development Opportunities
In 2004, the SG began investigating further opportunities to make the processing of the p-card transactions more streamlined. There are several suppliers that can offer p-card back office solutions. The SG worked with PCCL and have now successfully processed several files from Barclaycard. The results have already demonstrated that even greater process savings can be achieved as there is less time involved in the back office activities.
More Information ...
Should you wish further information relating to this case study or general information about the eProcurement Scotl@nd service please contact:
eProcurement Scotland General Enquiries
Telephone: 0131 244 3618
E-mail: eprocurement@scotland.gsi.gov.uk
Sarah Stevenson
P2P Process Specialist
Telephone: 0131 244 0723
E-mail: Sarah.Stevenson@scotland.gsi.gov.uk