The Scottish Executive is on course to make annual savings of £200m after introducing eprocurement technology across a number of Scottish public sector organisations.
The eProcurement Scotl@nd (ePS) service, developed by Capgemini, has been operational across the Executive, the NHS and local government since 2002. It will achieve the savings by the next financial year.
Nick Bowd, director of the Scottish Executive’s procurement directorate, says the project has been successful because it is seen as a tool for business change.
‘This has not been purely about IT, but also process change,’ he said.
‘If we had just gone in and imposed a system the result would most likely have been poor.’
EPS’s programme director Ian Burdon says private sector supply organisations have been involved from the outset, contributing to the development of the system.
‘For this to work we had to make sure the private sector was willing to participate, and the project is part of our effort to make Scotland a good place for businesses to do work with the public sector,’ he said.
Glasgow City Council is the ePS’s biggest user so far. It went live with the system in February and has processed £4m-worth of orders this year alone.
The city’s head of egovernment Elma Murray says ePS has resulted in major changes.
‘There were some initial teething problems, due to the size of what Glasgow was doing with ePS, but they were resolved quickly, and we are pleased with the way it is working,’ she said.
‘Manual handling of procurements has been reduced to exceptions only, and we are on course to make big efficiency savings from using it.’
Butler Group senior analyst Teresa Jones says ePS has been popular because it has given small organisations access to procurement technology – usually the preserve of larger companies.
‘EPS allows small players to get involved because the cost of entry is low,’ said Jones.
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