What do they do?
King’s College Hospital Trust is one of Europe’s leading teaching hospitals, specialising in liver disease, neurosciences, haemato-oncology and foetal medicine.
Why did they need our help?
King’s College Hospital’s Procurement department influences an annual budget of £120 million and deals with around 1500 suppliers each year. The existing purchasing process had several serious deficiencies:
- Average time from start of requisition to delivery was an untenable 13.5 working days.
- Staff found it difficult to identify whether items should be ordered via the NHS Logistics Online (LOL) system or manually via Procurement.
- Managers were ‘blind signing’ requisitions, often without knowing the cost.
- Staff had no effective way to track orders in the system.
- Off-contract ordering prevented the Trust from maximising the value of negotiated contracts.
An Access database enabled staff to track the status of orders. But it required a major clerical effort to keep the information up to date; data was being retyped, often with errors; and Procurement was dealing with a growing number of enquiries.
How did we help them?
Choosing Sprinter Purchasing Manager as an easy-to-use hosted service, they were able to create a catalogue of items at pre-negotiated prices, and an automated, visible online requisitioning process. This has cut expensive off-contract buying, accelerated the requisition-to-delivery process and freed up valuable time and resources to devote to healthcare.
What do they have to say about us?
“We chose Bottomline because of its market position and pedigree for the provision of financial solutions”.
Sean Ennor, IT Director
“Processing costs have fallen through reducing average requisition-to-delivery time from 13.5 days to 5.5 days. Most orders are now fulfilled within 24 hours.”
David Walach, Systems and Data Manager, King’s College Hospital Trust
