Charity cuts costs with automated financial process

Shaw Trust looks to reduce suppliers with procurement system

Shaw Trust automates procurement

Shaw Trust, a charity that provides employment services for disabled people, is automating procurement to cut costs and improve control of its financial processes.

The charity’s 60 offices and 28 retail outlets were using more than 5,000 suppliers and generating more than 50,000 invoices per year.

It has installed BasWare’s Enterprise Purchase to Pay software and hopes to reduce invoices and suppliers by a third.

‘We have a big purchasing power, but we do not understand what we are buying,’ said Gregory Asante, head of commercial enterprise finance at Shaw Trust. ‘When we do, we will be able to negotiate better deals.

‘Our first target saving is £500,000. We have started identifying areas of spending we had not initially looked at.’

The system will also provide detailed spend analysis reports, helping the finance team achieve further efficiencies.

Manual tasks will be removed from the financial process by integrating this with invoice processing, invoice matching, and contract matching software.

‘It quickly became apparent that we could make further efficiency gains by automating invoice processing alongside procurement, which will be a major boost to our overall profitability,’ said Asante.

Nearly half of Shaw Trust’s 1,200 staff will have access to the invoice approval system following the implementation of BasWare software across all offices on a project basis over the next six months.