A major advantage to Gold members of One Nucleus is their access to our Group Purchasing Scheme with discounts available across eight high quality Preferred Suppliers (https://onenucleus.com/purchasing) which already saves our members in excess of £3M per year.

Businesses are increasingly adopting technology-driven approaches to purchasing, some more integrated than others and some requiring more investment in than others to initiate. None of the approaches exclude a member from being able to access One Nucleus pricing with any of our Preferred Suppliers, but there does appear to be some knowledge gaps for companies assessing which option is best suited to their level and range of purchasing.

To shine a light on the various options, One Nucleus convened a purchasing lunchtime roundtable discussion with members on the 23^rd January 2019 for each to share experiences and insight. The membership is using all the different available ordering channels below:

Manual Order

Generate an order either from an accounts package or standalone system, submit the order via e-mail, fax or phone to the supplier, the supplier verifies and inputs the order on their system.

The item arrives the delivery note is given to accounts, the delivery note is attached to the invoice, the invoice is paid, and paperwork stored or scanned.

Webshop

Depending on the company procedures you may still need to generate an order either from an accounts package or standalone system but there is no set up costs or lengthy project implementation. 

Again, depending on the company procedures, you may still need to match the delivery note to the invoice etc.

Cloud-based Procurement

Companies can buy bolt on solutions, which include an e-Requisitions module for enabling companies to control purchases, as well as to streamline the purchase approval process and maintain budgetary control, the e-Invoices module automates transmission, approval, reconciliation and audit of the invoice process. They also provide e-Catalogue, a Web interface enabling to find, view, and compare products from suppliers, e-Configurator module that integrates with e-ordering hub and transmits orders directly into the supplier’s order processing system for error-free transactions; e-Reports solution that offers pre-configured procurement and finance, spend by category, transaction, supplier, performance, departmental, and contract monitoring reports; and transaction hub, which is a Web-based platform that connects purchasing and supply organisations for secure automated procure-to-pay document transmission. In addition, the companies offer non-catalogue ordering capability services to cater for off catalogue purchases of bespoke items.

PunchOut

This is an e-procurement software application that makes it possible for a company to access a supplier's web site from within the company’s own procurement application. The company leaves ("punches out" from) their company's system and goes to the supplier's Web-based catalogue to locate and order products, while their application transparently maintains connection with the Web site and gathers pertinent information. PunchOut enables communication between the software and the web site so that relevant information about the transaction is delivered to the appropriate channels.

Direct

This enables companies to use their existing own ERP to send and receive data directly to their supplier. Using data directly from the customers ERP, the supplier can then ‘map’ this directly into their our own ERP ensuring a fully automated eProcurement solution

Conclusion

There is a variety of solutions available to life science companies when it comes to how they purchase products, track orders and integrate the purchasing into their own accounting procedures. There is not a one-size fits all, but the discussion revealed a number of pros and cons for each option.

Looking Ahead

One Nucleus is currently meeting with a variety of providers of the above platforms in order to bring further support to our members to enhance yet further the already impressive savings afforded to our members