Document Management News

Wealden District Council (WDC), an East Sussex local authority, is implementing a financial management system (FMS) with integrated budgeting, forecasting and electronic procurement functionality from COA Solutions. This FMS, which also comprises electronic document management and data capture software (using Version One’s technology), will provide WDC with greater control over spend and automate procurement, including reducing manual data entry of invoice information by 80%. The planned go-live is April 2010.

Simon Little, Chief Accountant at Wealden District Council, says, “Our budgeting and forecasting processes rely on collating information from unwieldy spreadsheets and consequently take a disproportionate time to complete . This is restrictive, time-consuming and doesn’t provide us with real-time information about current and future spend. Our procurement processes are also manually-intensive and so we identified the need for a software system to provide greater visibility of expenditure whilst streamlining procurement.”

COA Solutions’ system was selected due to the broad range of functionality it can provide in a single, integrated solution. WDC was also impressed by the company’s extensive experience of delivering business applications to the public sector.

Using the COA Solutions system, WDC will be able to budget and forecast more accurately and in real-time, providing greater visibility of spend. The council will also replace manually-intensive procurement processes with automated purchase-to-pay ( P2P), reducing time-consuming administration whilst providing procurement accountability.

Mr Little comments, “The COA Solutions system will increase spend transparency whilst bringing uniformity to our procurement processes. By having access to accurate and up-to-date information about out current and predicted spend, this will aid decision making. As we no longer have to waste several days consolidating budget spreadsheets, this will also free-up time, allowing staff to concentrate on more value-adding activities.”

With the automated P2P functionality, all purchase invoices arriving into the council will be scanned, tagged to the relevant transaction in the finance system and electronically stored in the archive. Any invoices requiring authorisation will be automatically routed to the appropriate members of staff for electronic approval. In addition, data on the invoices will be automatically captured and verified before being uploaded to the accounting system, significantly cutting manual data entry.

Mr Little adds, “By automating our purchase-to-pay processes, we will have greater control over supplier payments and streamline procurement, including reducing manual data entry of invoice information by 80%. By eliminating the printing, photocopying and filing of financial documents, this will further improve efficiency whilst helping us to meet the environmental targets set-out by the Government’s Sustainability Agenda.”