eProcurement Scotland

e-abc Case Study

West of Scotland Member Councils worked together through Authorities Buying consortium (now expanded across Scotland and changed to Excel) to save money and help member communities. In support of the Consortium approach, and to harness the synergies of the Council by Council implementation it was agreed to form a West of Scotland programme office. The main objective being to assist in the development and oversee the overall project plan to implement, the eProcurement Scotl@nd service, in each participating member council and abc in conjunction with the service providers.

Summary

During spring 2003, the West of Scotland Purchasing Consortium comprising of 12 Local Authorities began the process of evaluation of the eProcurement Scotl@nd service by commissioning CGEY to provide a detailed report on the Best Practice Implementation of the service. This activity concluded in October 2003 with the Business Case Challenge which informed the Consortium members on the key financial information required by the individual members to make their decision on joining the service.

Background

Within this programme office, member councils have access to a dedicated full time resource for Supplier Adoption to facilitate their implementations and mentor their own Supplier Adoption Leads and contract owners.

The Supplier Adoption process involves the management of a pipeline flow of chosen suppliers with periodic review and co-ordination with and input to the master supplier database of the eProcurement Scotl@nd service.

To date there are three West of Scotland Local Authorities who have implemented eProcurement Scotl@nd; Renfrewshire, Argyll and Bute and North Ayrshire Councils.

Pilot departments for the implementation have varied from Roads to Catering, and Social Services to Housing with all LA's piloting within their IT functions.

Suppliers chosen are predominantly those who have either Authority specific contractual relationships, contractual relationships facilitated by authorities buying consortium contracts or both, although in some instances to facilitate data capture suppliers used on an ad-hoc basis by the Authority were formally adopted.

Supplier Adoption across the three Authorities varied in supplier size and capability; ranging from the technologically enabled to traditional trades. Supply organisations with as few as 9 and greater than 10,000 employees, were adopted proving the theory that ePS is open to all suppliers regardless of size and technical capability.

Connection options and transmission methods varied, working with and talking to suppliers on behalf of individual authorities (sometimes for the first time) the most appropriate method was chosen depending on product/service and procurement process capability.

Working collaboratively on Supplier Adoption the West of Scotland Local Authorities are tasked with completing a minimum of eight new supplier adoptions per LA through the full supplier adoption model. The objective being that this would encourage supplier adoption knowledge transfer to each Local Authority for a wide range of supplier types and connection options, together with the benefits of previously adopted suppliers from other LA's (some of whom were utilising the same WOS purchasing agreements) .

Some suppliers had previously been listed as "already adopted" by other public bodies; the ease of implementation of such suppliers varied but highlighted an alternative method of mini adoption known as "bulk load". Bulk Load suppliers are suppliers whose basic details are entered on the individual PECOS system to enable transactions using current practice to satisfy user requirements and facilitate data capture. Working with other ePS customer SA leads and service providers, the bulk load process was recognised as valuable and agreement was reached that ePS customers would not enter "bulk load" suppliers on the Supplier Adoption Database. Consequently the number of suppliers with whom we had to work through full adoption increased and resulted in a significant number of suppliers with content being available for all three "go live" dates.

Process improvements

• Improved and informed lead times (NTL, 8 Days to less than 24 hours)
• Catalogue descriptions (Antalis)
• Contract compliance for price and delivery costs (Turner Hire & Arco)
• Updating of schedules of rates for prices and end of range items (Turner Hire)
• How to facilitate credits and add audit trail into process (Albion)
• Improved process for communicating and audit trail (all suppliers)
• Implementation Project Team members, suppliers and contract owners became familiar with using new software packages: email, spreadsheets, CSV files, PowerPoint
• Changes to training material
• Management of contract data
• Customers use contract reference on purchase orders (catalogue key field)
• Logical naming conventions used for catalogue keys; catalogue keys are stored at level one in PECOS this was identified as issue once 3 authorities using the same contract for same supplier was forwarded on by 2 organisations to Elcom for loading.

Benefits

• Procurement and supplier adoption knowledge transfer to contract owners : abc buyers and authority contract owners
• Cross functional working parties and partnership relationships with health, central programme office and service providers Cap Gemini resulted in improved supplier adoption documentation
• Alignment of data requirement fields, between catalogue management tool Reqio and the PECOS system.
• First successful use of catalogue management tool Reqio - changes to training material
• User base have better access to supplier ranges and content of purchase orders improved
• Invoices can be forwarded straight to finance, they no longer require to be sent to order originator
• Each authority benefits from lessons learned of previous implementations,
• Rework reduced
• Resolution of core issues to avoid duplication of effort.
• Less duplication of suppliers in back office financial systems
• Audit trail
• Identification of improvements to supplier adoption database
• One supplier able to have many catalogues e.g. different contracts (Active Office)
• Programme working toward utilization of unique identifier for each supplier

The lessons learned and experiences gained, have only been possible due to the participation of local authority staff, suppliers, (contract owners LA's and abc), system & service providers and supplier adoption leads representing all public sector organizations. Many thanks to all those involved.

Future:

It is anticipated that other councils in the West of Scotland will commit to the ePS service. They will benefit from the support and expertise available, as a shared funded resource and from the experience gained, during earlier implementations.

More Information ...

To obtain further information relating to this article on implementation of eProcurement Scotl@nd service please contact:

Argyll & Bute Council
Lynsey Ford, Supplier Adoption Officer, e-Procurement Project Team A & B
Telephone: 01546 604173
e-mail: lynsey.ford@argyll-bute.gov.uk

North Ayrshire Council
John Barrett, e-Procurement Project Team NAC
Telephone: 01294 324271
Email: jbarrett@north-ayrshire.gov.uk