Document Management News

Gloucester City Council has cut the time it takes to procure goods by 75% using COA Solutions’ eProcurement platform.

The eProcurement system has been integrated with @UK’s eMarketplace and has transformed the efficiency of Gloucester City Council’s procurement department. It has cut the time it takes to procure an item from 20 minutes to just five minutes.

Gloucester City Council wanted to streamline its procurement processes and identified the need for a flexible and reliable electronic procurement system to replace the inefficient processes undertaken by council staff.

Gloucester City Council also required the system to tightly integrate into its existing COA Solution financial management system, and have the ability to “punch-out” to a central database of suppliers via an electronic marketplace.

@UK’s eMarketplace is a web-based application and facilitates electronic trade between one or more local authorities and many supplier organisations.

Sarah Tilling, systems administrator at Gloucester City Council, said, “We used to maintain an in-house catalogue to monitor the costs of goods and services from suppliers. As you can imagine, this was extremely labour intensive and prone to error. We also had to manually key-in information when placing an order which was another inefficient use of our time.”

Gloucester City Council selected COA Solutions’ eProcurement system integrated into @UK’s eMarketplace solution. The eProcurement system enables the automation of a range of procure-to-pay processes and is integrated into the council's financial management system.

Tilling said, “Implementing COA Solutions’ software has cut the time it takes to procure an item by 75%. It previously used to take us around 20 minutes to manually order a dozen stationery items, whereas now we can do this in just five minutes with a few mouse clicks.”

Authorised council users now "punch out" into the @UK eMarketplace where they can automatically select their goods and services from a wide range of suppliers, without manually keying-in information, significantly saving time and improving efficiency.

Once a basket of goods has been selected for purchase, the specific contact details of the person who raised the order are added to the system, providing instant traceability and accountability.

Instead of having to pay at the supplier’s checkout, the order is brought back into COA Solutions’ eProcurement system and the goods are matched with the general ledger codes before being sent to a council officer for approval.

Once approved, the order is then raised and sent electronically via the @UK eMarketplace to the chosen supplier, where it is seamlessly converted into an electronic invoice and instantly committed to the council’s COA Solutions financial management system.

Using the document management functionality that is integrated into the financial management system - which uses technology from COA Solutions subsidiary Version One - Gloucester City Council ensures that all of its financial documents, such as remittance advices and statements, are electronically created and delivered.