The University of Aberdeen has become the first UK academic institution to go ‘live’ with an eProcurement service which will help transform the process of procuring goods and services.
The eProcurement Scotland (ePS) service is already widely used in local government and the NHS and has been credited with savings in excess of £50 million in the five years since it has been in operation.
The new service has been sponsored by the Scottish Executive and has been recognised as one of the most successful eGovernment initiatives in Europe.
Consisting of an internet-based eProcurement solution, which supports the full purchasing cycle, the new technology will provide a range of services for the University including eSourcing, (electronic tendering and auctions) allowing institutions to issue quotations, tender exercises, etc electronically and will ultimately lead to electronic invoicing.
As well as the immediate benefit of ease of use, users can take advantage of access to online catalogues, compare prices and specifications from different suppliers and, once approved, the order is automatically transmitted directly to the supplier.
The University of Aberdeen is acting as a pathfinder organisation for a wider improvement programme. All of Scotland's 62 universities and colleges will adopt the ePS service over the next two years which will lead to greater opportunities for collaboration on the purchase of selected external goods and services.
Irene Bews, Director of Finance, University of Aberdeen said: "I'm extremely pleased with how smoothly 'go-live' has gone and already can see how the service will make our life easier at the University of Aberdeen.
"We are already seeing some of the benefits of implementing ePS, one of them being a reduction in the time it takes to order goods and process transactions. This will ultimately enable us to release funds back into our core business of research and teaching."
The School of Medicine is the first School within the University to have access to ePS with 400 users and 116 suppliers set up on the new system, as well as over 300,000 lines of catalogue content. In addition, seven punch out sites have been configured which allows the user to access the suppliers own web site, add goods to a shopping basket, which automatically becomes a requisition on returning to ePS. This is the largest volume of catalogue items available to any organisation in the first phase of an ePS roll out.
The goal is to implement the eProcurement Scotl@nd service throughout the entire University by the end of 2007. Over the next few months, the rest of the College of Life Sciences and Medicine and the College of Physical Sciences will be brought on board followed by Administration, the College of Arts & Social Sciences and Estates.
For further information about the implementation visit: www.abdn.ac.uk/finance/ePS