Julie Reed
Julie Reed
Deputy Director of Finance, NHS Foundation Trust
Why NEP Cloud?
We were a founding member of the NEP Consortium and the business benefits for the move to a true cloud solution were attractive, in that we would be in a strong position to take advantage of the latest technologies and could utilise the drive for best practice and improve efficiencies within both Finance and Procurement.
Our initial aim was in the P2P area in terms of streamlining processes, introducing more automation and reducing the paper with an objective to release the team in pursuing more value-added activities within the business.
The NHS were also being targeted by the Department of Health to adopt the e-Procurement directives and as such our old processes were deemed to be non-compliant.
How did NEP Cloud help?
NEP Cloud have been a pioneer with the adoption of Peppol transacting within the NHS. Because of this we have the ability to utilise the latest technologies available to us, enabling the implementation of key functionality and allowing us to adhere to the latest governmental and industry directives.
NEP Cloud have actively worked with their Peppol access point to drive adoption of Suppliers to trade with the NHS. The NEP Cloud team have worked with the full NEP Consortium to successfully adopted over 450 suppliers who are now trading via Peppol. This number is steadily growing and as the adoption of suppliers increases, we and the wider NHS will all benefit greatly.
Operationally, this means that purchase orders are transmitted electronically across the Peppol network and supplier invoices transmitted back in the same way. This removes all of the manual intervention and processing element, providing a seamless transmission saving considerable resource and cost in the full purchase to pay process of the system.
What are the benefits and your future aspirations?
The adoption of suppliers has been key to the development of Peppol compliant transacting and we have seen some huge benefits to our internal processes, especially as some larger volume suppliers have been on-boarded.
This process has proven invaluable in providing the ability to facilitate remote working for staff that have been advised to shield throughout the pandemic as invoices no longer need to be manually scanned into the system.
The NEP Cloud system can be accessed remotely via the internet and on our staff members own personal devices, removing the immediate pressure to provide all staff with the technology required to connect with the organisations internal networks.
We have also been working very closely with the NEP Cloud Team to on-board Fleet Solutions as a supplier, this has enabled us to receive Purchase Orders and return Invoices to other NHS bodies seamlessly, saving both us and other organisations a huge amount of processing time. As more and more NHS bodies activate the Peppol connectivity, this will continue to provide further time savings across the NHS.
Individual Statements
- A massive benefit of the NEP Cloud Solution is enabling staff to work remotely using their own devices. When some of our staff were advised to shield during the pandemic, we were able to support remote working almost instantly with minimal disruption.
- The flexibility of the NEP Cloud Solution has meant that throughout all the disruptions of the pandemic, we have managed to meet every deadline and submit all returns on time and in full – it really has been invaluable.