Coventry City Council Cuts Overhead by US$414,000 by Migrating 24% of Spend to Online Purchasing

Overview

Coventry City Council provides local government services to 306,000 residents and businesses in the United Kingdom's eleventh largest city. Coventry City Council wanted to streamline and e-enable financial and purchasing processes following a government Best Value Review assessment and improve budget management and gain advance visibility of spending by introducing commitment accounting. The challenge was to cut back-office purchasing costs and leverage best value for US$258 million annual spend on goods and services and reduce volume of items in stock, shorten purchasing cycles, and pay supplier invoices faster. The council implemented Oracle iProcurement as part of the council's Modernization and Improvement Plan following a poor Corporate Performance Assessment (CPA) rating in 2002 and migrated 33% of transactions online within 12 months.