In recent posts of this series, we took a look at what it means to build relevance and intelligence into an eProcurement system, explaining the first two pillars of the WeProcurement™ approach. This week, let’s look at a real-world example and see how Cornell Scott-Hill Health Center (CSHHC) used Intelligence to meet their goals in automating purchasing and invoice processing.
Who is CSHHC?
Cornell Scott-Hill Health Center offers a range of programs including medical, dental, and behavioral health with 33,000 patients per year, 16 care sites, over 550 employees, 5 school-based health centers, and a dental school-based health center.
What were their goals with eProcurement?
CSHHC was focused on uniting their workforce on one eProcurement system to automate the Procure-to-Pay (P2P) process and:
- Create a collaborative environment, empowering the Purchasing and A/P teams to work together towards savings targets
- Forge a user-driven process for stability and efficiency, regardless of turnover in team leadership
- Reduce risk by controlling the purchasing process and ensuring compliance to industry regulations, like those of the Joint Commission.
How did CSHHC deliver Intelligence through their WeProcurement approach?
CSHHC knew that the single most important key to the success of their eProcurement rollout would be getting employees to use the system. In order to get everyone using the system, it was critical for them to not only build Relevance into the solution to make eProcurement make sense in their daily work, but also to give employees critical information within their workflows to make the system easier to use than not. Serving up critical intelligence to users within the buying process – without making them go look for information in other systems – creates efficiency and keeps everyone following the preferred process.
As part of their WeProcurement approach, CSHHC ensured Intelligence was given to users of the system in the following ways:
- In-Workflow Data: CSHHC ensured that data needed to accomplish various tasks was given to the users at the exact time needed, which made a significant difference in productivity, especially for the Accounts Payable (AP) team. Instead of spending an exorbitant amount of time chasing down employees for information, the AP team now has approval, coding, and matching data at their fingertips in the workflow for processing invoices. This manual process is now automated, saving not only time but also reducing risk by removing the opportunity for human error.
- Critical Visibility: By implementing an eProcurement system with the WeProcurement approach, CSHHC gave the procurement and AP teams intelligence through critical visibility into Purchase-to-Pay activities. This encouraged collaboration between the teams to identify and prevent duplicative efforts, which ultimately saved everyone time and produced savings for the organization. This intelligence helped them uncover two areas of unnecessary spending:
- Two different pest control vendors were being used for the same services, one procured through the purchasing department and one sending invoices directly into AP
- A monthly storage unit rented 20 years ago that the organization was still paying rent for, but not using.
- Exception-Only Alerts: The way CSHHC configured their WeProcurement solution, all spending except for payroll funnels through the system via purchase orders. So, this means AP staff is only alerted when certain invoices need to be reviewed – usually Non-PO invoices, since those are a rare occurrence. This critical intelligence allows AP staff to focus more on other tasks and know that the only invoices that require investigation are being flagged, while other invoices that automatically match are flowing through for payment.
To learn more about delivering a WeProcurement approach, download the eBook and stay tuned for the next edition in this series – WeProcurement Key Pillar 3: Awareness – Creating Stewardship Across Purchase to Pay.
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