This large central government department has a commercial function of over 150 staff managing approximately £1.5bn of third-party expenditure.
Challenge
A legacy, on-premise transactional purchasing system was in use, but our client wanted to digitize the source-to-pay (S2P) process as part of a wide-ranging commercial transformation. The project aimed to increase transparency of spend, to digitally enable procurement, and to empower staff to access suppliers through an efficient and compliant buying process.
They selected a cloud-based solution; however, the implementation had been running for over a year. The client’s internal project team lacked experience in mapping the new system processes to their business’ ways of working and in creating and managing a complex department-wide change program.
Approach
Proxima deployed an S2P specialist with significant experience sourcing and implementing digital procurement solutions across a variety of sectors. We were engaged to play two key roles:
- Ensuring that the implementation of the solution would meet the stated objectives. Our procurement specialists would deliver this by providing functional expertise to lead the design and delivery of new business processes and “wrap-around” services. This would also see the creation of a new tactical Buying Team
- Ensure that the organization was “change ready.” Our procurement consultancy team provided change and communications support to set the program up for success. This would include a change strategy and supporting documentation.
We undertook an initial “As is Assessment” of the environment (processes, policies, and technology). Then, we worked closely with business stakeholders to design an intuitive set of processes and user experience guidelines. The organization would then be able to funnel requests to the right buying channels, creating a seamless buying process.
Results
Proxima provided the digital procurement expertise and leadership skills to guide the client through the implementation process. Our input not only accelerated progress but also helped the client learn and enhance their internal capabilities. We contributed to three key areas:
- Leading the Process Design team to remap business processes, enabling over £1bn of spend to be directed through compliant buying channels and ensuring that spend is automatically routed to a Commercial team for review, where appropriate.
- Becoming the trusted advisor to the client’s Supplier Enablement team to help navigate the challenges suppliers present when required to migrate their purchase orders and invoicing processes into an online portal.
- Using our experience of running our in-house shared service solution, we were able to provide best practice and process guidance for the creation of a new Commercial Tactical Buying Team that would enable non-catalog spend to have both a commercial and governance challenge before committing spend with a supplier.
About Proxima
We bring a wealth of capability, insight, and supply market knowledge to every challenge. Over 30 years as a top procurement consulting firm means we have exceptional delivery experience to help the world’s leading brands trust Proxima with their business goals.
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