Bristol & Weston NHS Purchasing Consortium embraces the Cloud

Bristol & Weston NHS Purchasing Consortium (BWPC) has selected SAP Ariba to drive its digital procurement transformation programme as it embraces a single modern procurement platform in the cloud.

This new partnership with SAP will streamline sourcing, contracts, supplier risk and procure to pay operations across two Trusts, addressing its legacy technology deficits and risk. The move to SAP Ariba will help enable BWPC’s vision for procurement; “To provide procurement support to the whole Healthier Together Partnership, improving patient care through effective management of the supply chain, whilst leveraging value across all our spend”.

BWPC is staffed by NHS employees hosted by North Bristol NHS Trust and its services include all aspects of clinical and non-clinical purchasing, supply chain management and capital equipping (CES). BWPC currently supports two NHS Trusts including North Bristol NHS Trust and University Hospitals Bristol and Weston NHS Foundation Trust, representing over 23,000 employees.

Close working relationships with these Trusts, and collaboration with other organisations, brings economies of scale, sharing of data and best practice so that they maximise savings and efficiencies. BWPC works closely with each client to support compliance with all purchase-to-pay procedures and delivering improved efficiencies in all areas including automation, consolidation of invoices, strictly controlled access to purchasing systems and so on.

To enable collaboration with other NHS organisations that are using Atamis for source to contract activity and to ensure compliance with transparency notice publication requirements, BWPC will be adhering to national data standards and building relevant process and integrations during the implementation of their new procurement platform.

To drive more efficiency and ultimately significant cost savings, BWPC has partnered with SAP to digitially transform its entire source to pay processes. By implementing SAP Ariba Strategic Sourcing, Supplier Risk and Procure to Pay, BWPC is looking to generate over £16m savings over five years as part of a multi-trust initiative.

David Druett, Director of Procurement at BWPC, said: “The delivery of a comprehensive end to end procurement system will support our overarching vision to improve patient care through effective management of our supply chain. We look forward to partnering with SAP to help us meet our objectives and ultimately provide a better service to our customers and patients.”

Ellie Lamey, Head of Intelligent Spend & Business Networks at SAP UK&I, said: “Today’s partnership with BWPC is further proof that we are the perfect scale and innovation partner for public sector organisations. With the speed, flexibility and agility of the cloud, organisations like BWPC can effectively manage costs and spend, while future-proofing their procurement operations against what challenges may come. We’re excited to help BWPC with its procurement transformation journey and ensure it continues to deliver the best possible patient care.”