Bristol e-business






http://www.bristolebusiness.net

Bristol e-business is Bristol City Council's eProcurement implementation. Bristol CC have been actively working on eProcurement (inc. Payment cards, BACS payments, etc.) for some 3 years. Initially they focused on their internal systems and then worked with The Consortium, one of their major suppliers, on an online ordering and fulfilment process.

The early trials were positive and Bristol CC decided to broaden the pilot to include additional suppliers. During this phase it became clear that for eProcurement to be successful it had to address the needs of the buyer and the supplier, both of whom required seamless integration of the whole process with their back office systems to deliver maximum benefits for all.

Bristol CC also had objectives to meet for both the central government's 'e-enablement' programme (including the delivery of procurement savings to the benefit of the Bristol community at large) along with the government's economic regeneration programme to ensure that businesses in the local community thrive and prosper.

With over 19,000 suppliers, many of whom are small companies, they had to find a simple, cost effective way of ensuring that eProcurement also worked for their supply base.

There were two aspects to this, firstly the technical infrastructure had to be in place and secondly there had to be a support and information service to support and help the suppliers through the change.

Bristol CC engaged with several organisations to make this happen - for a technology partner they selected @UK PLC who provide the Bristol e-business portal which aggregates general information of the suppliers for the buyers and hosts the suppliers' ecommerce web sites. Suppliers can create and manage a fully compliant e-commerce site at an average cost of £240 per year. This service has the double benefit of ensuring that suppliers can continue to trade with Bristol CC, as well as allowing the supplier to trade with any other organisation or individual.

Bristol also worked with Sage PLC the UK's largest supplier of accountancy software to small and medium sized companies. A cross database match showed that a large percentage of Bristol's suppliers were users of the Sage accounting system. As a result of these findings they then asked Sage PLC and @UK PLC to integrate the web building software with the sage accounting package, this was done for the Bristol eBusiness Launch in May 2003. This gives the suppliers the ability to load catalogues onto their Bristol eBusiness web site directly from their accountancy package and to stream orders directly to their back office. This level of integration is a 'first' and has been warmly welcomed by the Bristol suppliers.

Bristol CC recognised that the provision of workable systems that should achieve mass take-up of suppliers was only the beginning of the change process and developed a suppliers' support programme in conjunction with Business West (their local Business Link) and their local Learning & Skills team. This programme ensures that every supplier is visited by a Business West advisor, who set eProcurement into the wider business context. Along with the Learning & Skills team, they assess the companies technical and process skills and infrastructure, providing practical help where required.

One of the problems faced by a number of suppliers is the 'fear factor' about computers and the internet; here Learn Direct are providing practical courses to give the suppliers the confidence to take part in the project. As a part of every course the supplier is taught how to set up and edit their web site, giving Bristol CC the confidence that all suppliers have both the understanding and the' where with all' to proceed .

Although early days for the project, the findings have been impressive with over 70% of suppliers who were contacted agreeing to support the initiative (a number realising the potential impacts to their business in the medium to long term should they not). This is starkly different to the majority of eProcurement implementations where supplier sign up remains low and consequently buyers lose confidence in their initiative. The suppliers who embrace this initiative also realise the benefits that this enables them to seemingly 'trade-up' with larger corporates who already support e-Procurement - a key upside to local economic development.

Overall the project took 6 months to set up and has been running for 4 months and the team has learned a great deal about what works and is turning this into a series of replicable processes. As the project matures they are happy to share these findings with other players who are at an earlier stage in their programmes.