GRWP GWALIA PIONEER GROUNDBREAKING ONLINE TRADING
1 May 2009
Welsh Housing Association, Grwp Gwalia, has become the first Welsh Public Sector organisation to go live with the Welsh Assembly Government’s sponsored eTrading solution, xchangewales.
Andrew Davies, Minister for Finance and Public Service Delivery, congratulated Grwp Gwalia on his recent visit on volunteering to be one of the early adopters of the new programme. He said; " Implementing any form of change into a business can be challenging. Grwp Gwalia have been great advocates of the programme from the start. Their commitment and regular feedback has been invaluable in paving the way for further Public Sector organisations to start implementing eProcurement. They have really been ahead of the game in pioneering the way for xchangewales.
" xchangewales is a ground breaking programme that allows all public sector organisations in Wales to source, tender, evaluate, order and pay for goods and services at a click of a button. The electronic tools and web based services help to improve efficiency, increase productivity and lower the cost of doing business.
" The significant savings released by xchangewales, potentially up to £200 million of 5 years, can be reinvested locally in the delivery of improved public services for the citizens of Wales. We’ve already calculated the xchangewales programme has delivered benefits of over £10million. Delivering better value for the Welsh pound."
Four years ago, Grwp Gwalia carried out an analysis of their financial management systems. Their Procurement and Business Management team were given the remit to identify an e-procurement package and to implement the solution into the organisation.
The xchangewales solution came up as the best option for a number of reasons:
· Economies of Scale – Grwp Gwalia would be able to take advantage of the buying power of the Welsh Public Sector as a whole.
· Reassurance – the technology behind the xchangewales solution was proven and in use.
· New opportunities – joining the xchangewales programme would open up opportunities to collaborate on large scale procurement projects.
Tracey Healey, Director of Procurement & Business Management for Grwp Gwalia, gave her view of the xchangewales implementation; "Every organisation adopting eProcurement should undertake some form of business process change on both their internal and external processes. This can help to achieve major process efficiencies and savings in the purchase to pay process.
"Even taking a couple of steps out of the P2P process can yield significant savings in terms of time and cost. And of course, we all must now be thinking more of the impact on the environment when we print off reams of heavy documentation – previously if Grwp Gwalia stacked all their paper output on top of each other, the pile would be as high as the Eiffel Tower (324 meters high!)
Tracey added "However, the full costs of delivering change should not be ignored, implementation of new technology was a learning curve for all and internal barriers such as budget coding, workflows and the empowerment of staff were all challenges that we had to overcome. Now we are looking forward to realising the potential cumulative financial benefits that the programme can deliver, internally procurement will be seen as strategic rather than a back office function."
For further information visit www.xchangewales.co.uk and www.gwalia.com
Read our Grwp Gwalia Case Study