In England alone NHS Commercial spends around £35 billion per year, across more than 80,000 suppliers.

However at Elcom we know that consumer-facing tech is usually streaks ahead of the software and systems deployed by health trusts to manage their procurement processes. And the norm is for disparate trusts in the same Integrated Care System (ICS) to use varying finance and procurement systems – this makes it impossible for systems to talk to each other so that a holistic approach can be taken.

The best way to achieve the desired result is smart management of the procurement processing across the ecosystem – managing the supply chain with healthcare enterprise resource planning (ERP).

We believe that eliminating wastage is a quick-win opportunity to help keep costs down – not only through operations but by using clearer data to achieve price negotiation and better bulk purchasing.

Who are Elcom?

Elcom’s life started in the early 1990s as a pioneer in electronic catalogue technology, partnering with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to create our best-in-class PECOS technology – a unique, cloud-based data-driven e-procurement solution.

Since then, we have taken a series of determined steps to grow our offering. We now offer a spectrum of solutions for purchasers and vendors, continuously innovating to meet our clients’ challenges and to make sure we are always one step ahead.

We are focused on supporting clients in the UK with our range of modules and our inventory and sourcing platforms.

Our mission is to make e-procurement smarter, more connected and transparent while helping our customers trade and save money. Based on values of passion, innovation and agility, empowerment, customer focus and fun, the vision is to work on transforming e-procurement all over the supply chain, making it accessible for all users and sectors.

We have UK offices in London, Glasgow, Birmingham and Liverpool, as well as worldwide offices in Boston, Belgrade, Johannesburg and Sydney and employ more than 100 people across our locations.

Who we work with

We provide services from suppliers, altering them to opportunities and tenders, as well as buyers across sectors including:

• health
• local government
• community care
• education
• corporate
• central government

Our systems include more than 230,000 suppliers, working with over 150,000 buyers and to date have processed well over 50 million purchase orders.

Project example

In implementation, we divide our analytics and management into three key areas:

1. Sourcing
2. Procurement
3. Inventory management and invoicing. 

What we would suggest is clearly in demand is proper management of this whole ecosystem, often across multiple sites in one or more NHS trusts, so that efficiency can be best delivered.

In practice, this is likely to be manifested by, for example:

• Better sourcing software for quicker supplier quotations
• Contract management programmes which reduce wastage
• Product catalogues shared across trusts
• Integrated procurement software which interface with finance programmes
• Inventory management with the ability to transfer stock between hospitals
• Electronic invoicing for sending orders and receiving invoice

One of our early deployments of our systems across an ICS framework is in north east England, with an organisation called the Humber & North Yorkshire Procurement Collaborative. This is responsible for some £550m of annual spend across the operations of Yorkshire & Scarborough, Hull and North Lincolnshire and Goole NHS Trusts.

Edd James, Director of Procurement at the collaborative, hopes to achieve over £15m of savings per annum within five years due to better efficiency and increased purchasing power.

Mr James believes that the figure of 266,000 invoices currently received each year by the trio of trusts can also be significantly reduced – massively saving accounting costs and improving efficiency.

“It’s always been frustrating to see our staff having the latest in tracking and delivery apps for their orders at home, yet nothing similar is available at their workplace,” he said.

“In addition, some of our suppliers are sending us ten thousand invoices per year, each of which has to be individually dealt with. Better systems will improve the ordering process, avoid duplications, provide better information and reduce ordering and invoicing requirements.

“It’s also urgent that we get our teams across the trusts working together as one. We’re introducing standardised governance as well as systems, so the procurement operations can coordinate their activity and work together. That will in turn improve our purchasing power and allow us to negotiate prices with our suppliers.

“I expect we can create major savings through these systems. I joined two years ago and we’re already expecting £4.5m of savings this year – that’s a figure we can drive up significantly and I’m forecasting that we will double this within the next two years, with further savings to come.”

Prior to awarding Elcom the contract for this new system, Mr James spoke to counterparts across the UK – at Scottish Government, at North Central London NHS and South West London NHS – who have already worked with Elcom on similar, albeit less extensive, projects.

“We were looking to improve the digitisation journey in procurement, put a system in place across the three teams, and also interface into three e-finance systems,” he said.

“We know that Elcom has delivered that elsewhere, and our research suggested that they were the only ones who could provide the range of solutions we need while interfacing with different finance systems.

“Our conversations have given us the confidence that they would be able to do that work. We’re looking forward to seeing the benefits of the new systems.”
     
Products and services

Our core products are around Source to Pay (S2P), Procure to Pay (P2P) and Inventory Management. In addition, we supply products which automate e-invoicing, accounts payable processes, e- and a supply chain finance.

For example, in our work with the ICS in Humber and North Yorkshire referenced earlier we have supplied:

• for sourcing – Elcom MultiQuote is an automated market place for requesting quotations from across multiple suppliers very quickly for requirements below the EU threshold for full tender. This solution generates on average 12.5% savings
   
• for contract management – Elcom Contract Manager enables contracts from any system to be imported and managed throughout the lifetime of the contract, providing expiry alerts, extensions, spend against contract and so on.
   
• for catalogue – Elcom Catalogue is where catalogues for products and services are created from contracts then shared across multiple systems from a single point of truth. Changes or updates are made centrally and, once approved, systems are automatically updated to ensure they are kept in synch.
   
• for procure to pay (P2P) – Elcom P2P provides a single procurement front end, making it easier for staff to work between sites as the experience will be the same everywhere when requisitioning items. The solution can integrate seamlessly across organisations and finance systems.
   
• for inventory management – Elcom Inventory provides complete visibility of stock wherever it may be, including the ability to transfer between hospitals and trusts at the touch of a button. Items can also be tracked to patient through Elcom’s Point of Care Scanning, meeting Scan4Safety requirements for item/patient recalls. In addition Elcom will be deploying final mile delivery tracking to provide visibility of stock from R&D to destination.
   
• for electronic invoicing – Elcom DocX facilitates the sending of electronic orders and, more importantly, receiving electronic invoices.

How to deliver

So how best to go about implementing better procurement systems in your organisation? We would suggest some key steps.

First, and most important, is high level of buy-in from top management across relevant departments. Implementation requires cost and time commitment, based on an understanding that up-front investment will result in significant savings relatively quickly.

The other reason why leadership is so important, apart from the initial impetus it provides, is to ensure that those deploying and using the new technology are able to use it most effectively.

Proper communications will ensure that people become accustomed to change more quickly, so that performance and productivity remain high.

It’s also important to involve IT and middle management in the implementation process so that the necessary flexibility can be achieved. Middle management will normally have a better view of how new systems will be set up and their input into understanding scope, scale and potential teething problems will be invaluable.

The other key factor to consider is data integrity. ERP works most effectively when data is clean and properly organised, regularly checked and audited. We’d suggest that this activity should be clearly allocated to relevant individuals within your organisation, comprehensively managed and planned at regular intervals. This way you’ll make sure you don’t have data which is duplicated or out-of-date, ensuring efficiency is maximised and costs minimised.

Contact us

For any questions on how you can deploy better procurement software in your organisation, contact us.