UKprocure ARTICLE

February 2008

Business Report

The market for eEnablement services started to move in 2007. NHS Trusts were receptive to the message that large business benefits can be gained from using a service provider to handle Catalogues and transmit Purchase Orders and Invoices. eMarketplaces are not just about catalogues – they are about delivering electronic Purchase Orders as well, turning those ePOs into electronic Invoices, and transmitting the invoices into your Accounts Payable system. It is increasingly accepted that without all three steps you do not really have eProcurement. Another growing realization is that if your issue is invoice matching, standalone eInvoicing is not the solution for you.

UKprocure believes that we won 100% of all NHS eMarketplace contracts placed in the past 18 months, including Royal Surrey County Hospital, Guys & St Thomas’s, Plymouth Hospitals and PCT, Torbay Care Trust, and Barking Havering and Redbridge, and just recently, most of Hampshire (see above.) Three weeks after project start, all the Hampshire organisations were live and working with their catalogues.

I am very pleased that UKprocure has been able to emerge from a change of management stronger than ever. We are delighted to remain the largest eMarketplace in the NHS by a wide margin. All of our customers are now happy with the UKprocure service. UKprocure has adjusted our business to the actual pace of the market and is breaking even. I take my hat off to my team for their hard work in making this happen.

The challenge remains that only approximately 11% of NHS Trusts have any form of eEnablement service. How much investment could be moved to front line services if all Trusts followed the example of Barts and the London, Royal Surrey, Guys, Plymouth, and Hampshire amongst others? Do Directors of Finance really have control of the commitments to suppliers made daily across their Trusts? What percentage of invoices really matches first time, to a pre-existing PO? What percentage of purchases is made through a best-practice PO process? Are your suppliers getting their orders instantaneously in the format they want, supporting their eCommerce strategy? Do your overhead suppliers have to author an entire special catalogue for you using eClass? Do you have a full suite of catalogues in your eProcurement system, and are they accurate? Do your catalogues only show end users what they should be buying, if control is your policy, or do they support an internal market, if that is your policy? UKprocure is happy to help you answer these questions.

2008 is going to be another exciting year for UKprocure and “eEnablement” in general. UKprocure is looking forward to 2008 from a position of optimism and good customer recommendations. The NHS is moving forward and grasping the benefits of eProcurement.