eProcurement Scotl@nd Recognise the Benefits

eProcurement Scotl@nd, powered by Elcom's flagship eProcurement technology, handled nearly £2.5 billion worth of transactions last year, a rise of 45 per cent on 2007 and helped to speed up the business of doing business and saving public money.

Finance Secretary John Swinney said:

"eProcurement Scotland (ePS) is one of the most comprehensive and successful eGovernment initiatives in the world. Over 100 public bodies have implemented ePS and most recently the Scottish Parliament joined the service. I want see even more organisations get the benefits of buying goods and services through ePS.

"ePS provides an effective and efficient way of improving procurement while saving taxpayers money, all the more crucial as we face increasing spending pressures. It also saves businesses time by speeding up order to delivery times and is a more sustainable way of doing business.

"Public organisations not already using e-procurement need to address this as soon as possible to help Scotland beat the recession."

There are over 100 public bodies currently using ePS and 70,000 suppliers are registered. The total value of transactions on ePS in 2008 was £2.47 billion compared to £1.7 billion in 2007.

Set up in 2002, ePS is a fully hosted and managed eProcurement service for the Scottish public sector, including central government, local government, further and higher education and the NHS. It provides a range of services including e-sourcing (electronic tendering and auctions) and transactional purchase to pay solutions. There are no general joining or service management charges for suppliers nor any transaction fees.

Elcom Product News

Elcom will continue to enhance its flagship eProcurement Application throughout 2010. Amongst the new features we are planning, there will be:

• Enhancements to the administration of workflow plans to enable Administrators to wildcard approval criteria as well as copy approval plans for use elsewhere within the organisation;
• Enhancements to the electronic acceptance and processing of Invoices to further reduce the burden on Accounts Payable staff that comes with processing tradition paper-based Invoices;
• Introduction of multi-jurisdictional taxation that will allow international organisations that trade across borders to better account for tax in the relevant jurisdiction.
• Enhancements to our electronic Document Exchange, CMX, to improve electronic Invoice creation for SME suppliers to further enable them to complete with larger suppliers.

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