British Transport Police cut costs with new e-procurement system

As part of its continued modernisation, British Transport Police (BTP) has announced that it will be installing a new e-procurement system to handle its £40 million annual spend on goods and services.

The installation will be handled by Ketera who supply on-demand spend management solutions to many public sector organisations. The new system will allow BTP to reduce its overall supply base by 50% and better negotiate contract pricing.

“Ketera’s on-demand spend management solutions will give BTP an important edge,” said Jonathan Williamson, e-strategy consultant at BTP. “With Ketera’s solution, we automatically get updates to new technology as it becomes available. Additionally, Ketera’s responsiveness is excellent, mainly because of the inherent flexibility of their on-demand offerings. When we need a change made, they handle our request immediately and will update our system within a half hour – not the response time one would expect if packaged application software had been installed.”

The Ketera Spend Analysis solution, which is an integral part of Ketera’s on-demand Spend Management suite, uses advanced technology that will classify spend data from various BTP sources. The solution uses a “closed loop” process to ensure that no detail is overlooked. The system will also give high levels of visibility and control over BTP’s total spend, which will include the ability to manage its data repository, author new contracts and track existing contracts and gauge how suppliers are performing against the BTP’s terms and conditions. Steve Savignano, chairman and chief executive officer of Ketera said: “BTP’s implementation will yield the type of cost and time savings that our other customers have come to expect from Ketera. Our solution will aid in controlling costs, managing performance and improving the effectiveness of its processes.”