NEP Sustainability and the importance of an integral ERP Solution
NHS Organisations using Finance and Procurement systems know that it is the bedrock to managing the finances, providing better data, simplifying decision making and supporting the management of risk and compliance. For procurement, it is to manage the day-to-day operations easily in one place, without the use of multiple disparate systems.
As the largest NHS Consortium utilising leading-edge Oracle fusion true cloud technology for both finance and procurement, we continue to maximise the use of these technologies enhancing knowledge sharing, collaboration, and quality to support our members’ sustainability. Despite being a small part of a much larger system, NEP believe in the importance of integrated finance and procurement technologies and the value it gives benefiting all.
Increasingly, we are seeing some organisations move away from solutions, disrupting the current seamless integration of finance and procurement. This is due to a current lack of understanding of the technology and digital capabilities we already have within the NHS.
Improving awareness of the technologies available is crucial to help support the NHS and allow organisations to make informed decisions based on what is possible.
Rather than discarding systems that may not be currently working perfectly, it is important to question why they are not working and consider potential local improvements. At a Director level, we should take the opportunity and the time to reflect, question and consider how we can maximise the resources we have already invested in. We should ensure our systems meet the needs of modern NHS today, rather than reinvest in other solutions that do not quite meet the digital age the NHS is aiming for. Look at what is here, right now, working delivering savings and clients benefiting from the integrated technologies we have.
Looking back to 2002 the NHS had a number of political drivers that influenced NEP, one of which was the National Finance and Supplies Procurement Initiative. NEP built our solution based on all those initiatives and delivered the technologies to provide a common integrated solution allowing aggregation and standardisation of data, facilitating savings, improve back-office services and give wider information to budget holders. This basic, yet fundamental goal has not changed.
If we look at our procurement portfolio today, we are GS1 partners, with that compliance supporting Scan for Safety. NEP work alongside many of our partners supporting procurement initiatives that also assists our finance teams. Framespan holds the largest directory of frameworks in one place, saving our procurement colleagues time, effort, and resource by assessing all frameworks in one place, which is available through our own NEP Cloud Portal. This is the first step for our buying colleagues in the procurement cycle.
The second element is our integration of Atamis into NEP Cloud sharing of key information enabling operational reporting and returning information from NEP Cloud into Atamis. It is important to note that we are not replacing the Atamis portal solution, that is key for our procurement professionals, not only for e-tendering, but in having a single source of information of contracts and suppliers enabling our procurement colleagues to manage their contracts and work plans easily and we compliment it.
Finally, by converting contracts into our integral catalogue solution run by our partner GHX, it gives us the key information needed to give our finance colleagues real time information, compliance, and our procurement teams the full Purchase to Pay process in one place. What is even more important is that we transact digitally and through our Peppol Access point, Pagero, we have engaged over 480 Suppliers to trade in this way.
Alongside our new integrated Cloud Supplier Portal, it enables our suppliers to ‘self-service’ queries on accounts, upload invoices and verify their own statements. This enables a more enhanced role for the AP (Accounts Payable) teams in building relationships with their Suppliers, working closer with Procurement, budget holders, working collaboratively on holds, supporting financial management on cash flow and having a more collaborative approach to managing the overall financial back-office services more efficiently.
With NEP Cloud and our very own innovative reporting tool, NEP Reach Reporting, we are reporting in real time, allowing our finance colleagues to report upon position and exception reporting quickly, along with supporting budget holders with their reporting using visual dashboards. By having true integration, the ability to drill down into the detail and retrieve images of digital invoices and purchase orders in real time makes their lives so much easier.
In terms of finance colleagues, it releases time enabling colleagues to adopt a more business manager style role across the organisation/directorate. Working alongside budget managers in this way not only enhances the relationship but fosters that of sharing knowledge and collaboration, that benefits the integration of back-office support to those in the front-line support to our patients.
At Director level, both Finance and Procurement colleagues have dashboards and KPI’s available supporting board reporting and both collaborative and operational procurement, made easier through our single supplier, single chart of accounts setup which is perfect for group reporting and particularly supports ICS/ICBs and procurement collaboratives. It also holds information around sustainability, the status of suppliers and manages risk.
NEP are part of the NHS, and more importantly operate on a not-for-profit basis. Our ethos is to support NHS initiatives whenever possible. Before making additional investments in new solutions or other options, we ask that you take a little extra time to consider and understand the successful technologies already available, particularly those we have invested in that complement and support NHS initiatives and the NHS Long Term Plan. The NEP Consortium is a great example of how our members work collectively to ensure a sustainable future for the NHS and its patients.
A few words from our consortium members
“With the continual development and capabilities of NEP Cloud in terms of Purchase to Pay automation within NEP Cloud, we had an 11% increase in volumes of invoices from the previous year. With the digitalisation of transactions, integration with Procurement and scanning we have seen no increase in resource, which would previously be an estimated 1.5 WTE (Whole Time Equivalent) (estimated at £100K) for this element alone. That clearly proves a tangible saving and real value of the investment the NEP Consortium has made.”
Paul Sutton, Head of Finance, University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
“Being both a client of NEP and a Board member, it is encouraging to see how much importance is placed on procurement within NEP Cloud. The collaboration is its strength, and we see developments, integration, and enhancements in line with the national procurement initiatives. Having recently played a part in the consulting on the development of its new Reach Reporting Procurement Dashboard, it enables a real-time visual status of operations, activity, and key performance indicators, both from a Trust perspective and supports that of a collaborative across the WYAAT group. There are clear and real benefits from having an integrated finance and procurement solution like NEP that supports procurement, and yet compliments other central systems which are also key to a successful procurement service in the NHS today.”
Paul Ralston, Procurement Director, Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust
“Integrity and uniformity of procurement data are paramount for effective benchmarking and spend analysis. NEP Cloud plays a crucial role in delivering robust, high-quality data sets in a standardised and automated format into the NHS Spend Comparison Service.
This automated data transfer enables provider resource efficiencies by eliminating the need for local manual intervention and facilitating reliable cost opportunity analysis. By leveraging NEP Cloud, we achieve standardisation of data across a range of NHS Organisations and automation of data transfers. This reduces the risk of data inaccuracies caused by manual interventions and lowers local overhead costs associated with data extraction and loading from local systems.”
Levente Fazekas, Spend Analytics & Data Standards Lead – NHS England
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