P2P Transformation – eCatalogues to delight buyers and suppliers

The Situation

Our client is a large NSW public sector organisation with a need to establish central eCatalogues that their buyers, their suppliers and their Finance and Audit teams were going to be delighted with. This would ensure high uptake and maximum benefits.

The objective was to provide a tool to make it easier for buyers to access and accurately purchase contracted supplies to:

• Increase contract utilisation to deliver on their negotiated benefits, and
• Improve compliance to process, minimising risks and increasing invoice and payment accuracy.

Our client had no easy way for its hundreds of sites to easily buy from centrally established contracts. Individual sites used a variety of methods for getting what they needed, often contrary to contracts and purchasing policies.

The Project

Our client needed a scalable solution, tailored for different business areas and to leverage existing technology infrastructure, such as the intranet and a supplier relationship management solution.

In designing and developing the system, we

• involved key users and stakeholders to ensure alignment of processes and to avoid any duplication of effort
• focused on ease of use for buyers to maximise take-up, policy compliance and ongoing usage. This included strict standards for catalogue content and alignment with existing systems and critical processes
• developed catalogues for high volume products both high and low value, as well as a tailored catalogue for contracts with services, all to meet their specific needs
• trained participating suppliers’ staff to support implementation by providing change-management, rollout and ongoing user support
• upskilled a small team within the Organisation to provide ongoing system support and guidance to users, and training and support for suppliers.

The Outcome

The eCatalogue Solution that we established:

• was readily adopted by users with high satisfaction and ongoing utilisation
• became highly regarded by suppliers who valued the business generated and ensured high compliance to content and contract requirements
• generated high compliance to policy and process, streamlining activity and reducing risks
• resulted in high contract utilisation, realising intended benefits and negotiated savings
• minimised internal costs by leveraging suppliers’ resources to support users
• received high recognition.

Learn more about what we do.