Whitehall buying agency the Office of Government Commerce (OGC) has saved more than £270m in three years thanks to the use of e-procurement.

The managed sourcing service from OGCbuying.solutions offers public sector organisations access to a suite of web-based purchasing tools to link them to relevant suppliers.

The technology has managed more than 300,000 document submissions that used to be paper-based, avoiding the printing of an estimated 53 million pages of paper – the equivalent of 500 tonnes of CO2.

And electronic document exchange saved the department more than £1m in postage costs alone.

“The success of the e-sourcing managed service demonstrates how effective framework agreements can be in giving public sector organisations access to products and services quickly and effectively," said Robert Knapman, head of e-commerce for OGCbuying.solutions.

The system comes from supplier BravoSolution.