Monday 22 April, 2013

Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council (MBC) has invested in a portfolio of software solutions from Advanced Business Solutions (Advanced) to help exceed its current £3 million procurement savings target. Advanced’s data capture and spend analytics solutions aim to help the council meet its 10 and 30 day supplier payment targets. The solutions will go live in a phased approach between April and July 2013.

Rotherham MBC is already benefiting from Advanced’s hosted e5 finance system with integrated document imaging. To further streamline the processing of the 140,000 supplier invoices received into the Purchase 2 Pay (P2P) team each year, and to exceed the £3 million per year procurement savings target currently being achieved, the council has invested in data capture and spend analytics software solutions from Advanced. These solutions will integrate with the council’s existing e5 finance system.

Joanne Kirk, P2P Manager from Rotherham MBC says, “In order for us to cut our procurement costs, meet our payment targets and be smarter about spend, we need to be supported by strong and effective solutions”.

Advanced’s data capture solution which uses optical character recognition (OCR) technology from V1, will go live in April 2013 to automatically capture invoice data. The council’s P2P team is targeting an 80% accuracy rate for the OCR solution leading to initial efficiency savings of 2 FTE’s. By further automating the P2P process, the council is looking to continue to meet 10 day payment targets to support both the local economy and SMEs.

Kirk adds, “We currently pay approximately 95 per cent of supplier invoices within 30 days and 50 per cent within ten days. Our goal is to pay suppliers in a timelier fashion to improve the benefits we can obtain from early payment discount terms for the benefit of Rotherham taxpayers and continue to be in the top quartile of local authorities for payment efficiency. The OCR data capture solution will support us in this goal.”

Advanced’s Spend Analytics software will go live in July 2013 and it is hoped to prove to be key to effectively analysing spend using data from the council’s e5 finance system. This insight can then be used to enable smarter and more cost-effective procurement.