e-Business

Havering Council is committed to making it easier to contact the public and businesses via the internet. Both the council and our suppliers can benefit from the opportunities provided by buying goods online, i.e. reduced paperwork, faster payments to suppliers and better, more accurate information for both parties.

In order to achieve this goal the council has implemented the following features and systems:

• e-Procurement
• e-Invoicing
• Purchasing Cards
• Prepaid Cards

e-Procurement

What is e-Procurement?
Simply put, e-Procurement is electronic purchasing, i.e. buying goods and services via the internet. e-Procurement can be defined in a number of ways and does not necessarily require new or high levels of technology. Suppliers to Havering will not be required to implement new or expensive systems to continue supplying us.

How does it work?
Havering uses the IDeA marketplace which enables staff to place orders, using catalogues or other information provided by its suppliers or by a direct link to a suppliers own website, just like shopping on Amazon. The Council has also implemented Oracle i-procure which enable full integration between Payments, General Ledger and Purchasing.

What is the IDeA marketplace?
The Improvement and Development Agency (IDeA) was established by and for local government in April 1999. Their mission is to support profitable improvement from within local government and to deliver practical solutions that will achieve this.
Marketplace is an electronic world-class procurement system developed exclusively for local government by IDeA. Marketplace enables the full purchasing process to be carried out online, from order creation and authorisation to goods receipting and invoice matching. Marketplace is also able to support electronic catalogues, purchase Cards, requests for quotes and spot pricing. As everything is done on the internet, no additional software is needed. Security is handled via user IDs and passwords.

Do suppliers have to use the marketplace?
Initially no, but it is Havering's intention that all purchasing will be done electronically within 3 years. Please note, suppliers do not need to be e-enabled to have their details loaded onto Marketplace as orders can either be faxed, e-mailed or posted. However, the council will need to put its suppliers and orders onto Marketplace and we cannot do this without suppliers giving us some basic information and consent for their details to be loaded.

How much will it cost suppliers?
There need not be any cost to you in using the marketplace. Havering will not charge you for any work in relation to the marketplace. However, if you require a punch out to your web site or EGS to load catalogues for you then a charge will be incurred.

What are the benefits to the Supplier?

• Free Service
• Fair and transparent tendering processes
• Saves time, money and resources
• Improves communication
• Simplified and speedy process
• Audit trail of all contract activity

e-Invoicing

What is e-Invoicing?
• e-Invoicing is the electronic transmission & receipt of invoices.
• For the London Borough of Havering as a Buying Organisation, this means one connection to all of our suppliers.

What are the benefits of e-Invoicing?
• Quicker more efficient invoice process through to payment.
• Reduced P2P process – reduced transaction / processing time releases staff resource to core activities.
• Avoids the need to scan / photocopy / store paper (financial and sustainable benefits)
• Reduced errors
• Electronic data archiving & electronic audit trail.
• Reduction in telephone calls chasing invoice payment.

What are the benefits to the supplier?
• Quicker, prompter payment from buying organisation.
• Guaranteed and immediate invoice delivery
• Reduction in costs – paper and postage costs
• Improved business relationships due to greater information and payment cycle.
• Electronic invoice archiving
• On-line access to view invoice status

Purchasing Cards

Havering Council is a leading UK Borough in the use of Purchasing Cards (Visa™).
The London Borough of Havering uses Purchasing Cards to simplify our purchasing process and currently £9 million of expenditure is managed this way. The benefits for the supplier include reduction in paperwork and speed of payment. The Council want to develop the use of Purchasing Cards and therefore your ability to process payments using Purchasing Cards is an advantage when tendering to do business with us.

What is a Purchasing Card and why use it?
Purchasing Cards are issued to employees that are responsible for making purchases on behalf of the London Borough of Havering (LBH). LBH guarantees the card and pays the administration cost associated to each purchase. In return it has a mechanism for tracking purchases made by its employees through the card.

What charges can suppliers expect?
In order for a supplier to accept Purchasing Cards, a supplier will need a card payment terminal or software solution that will prompt you to input the VAT information at the time of processing the card's transactions.
The supplier pays the Merchant Service Charge (MSC) to its acquiring bank as a percentage of the transaction value. The MSC varies from bank to bank, a competitive environment, and depends on the total amount of business and average transaction values of the supplier. Contact your own bank or shop around to obtain the best solution for your business requirements.

How Purchasing Cards differ from other plastic Cards
Purchasing Cards differ from other types of plastic Cards primarily due to the level of management information reported to the cardholder (in this case London Borough of Havering). Conventional card transactions report the date, amount of the transaction and the name of the supplier to the cardholder. However, with Purchasing Cards, more details of the transaction are reported including the full VAT details, thus eliminating the requirement to issue and reconcile invoices.

What are the Benefits to the Supplier?
Please see our Top Ten Benefits for Suppliers document on the right hand side.

Prepaid Cards

What is a Prepaid Card?

In 1998 the London Borough of Havering was one of the first Local Authorities to introduce Purchasing Cards to its staff by way of making efficiencies in procurement and enabling staff to procure in a streamlined way. Since this time we have had one of the most successful programmes for Purchasing Cards and Councils throughout the country have looked at Havering as an exemplar Council in this area. Due to the development of Purchasing Card technology there is now an opportunity to move on to a new concept of Prepaid cards which can deliver efficiencies for the Council. The use of Prepaid Cards in areas such as Adults, Children's, Benefits, Payroll and Petty Cash will move the Council to "Best in Class" for payments.
In today's public sector agenda the Prepaid card will deliver:
• Transparency of public finances
• Help with our CAA rating
• Improve processes
• Reduce costs
• Prepare the Council for the withdrawal of cheques in 2018
• Contribute to the Comprehensive Spending Review
• Put people first through inclusion
• Directly affect the "Personalisation Agenda"

In essence a pre-paid card would enable the Council to pay monies, owed to customers, electronically onto a card rather than pay by cash or cheque.

What are the Benefits?

• Fully implement a Prepaid card system to the Council
• New business process fully understood by all affected staff and customers
• Training programme on the Prepaid Cards
• ICT function changes with all interfaces working
• Unify payments through either BACS or Prepaid Cards
• Removal of cheques as a payment system as soon as possible
• Removal of manual processes relating to payments

I need to know more, who do I contact?

If your inquiry is related to:
- e-Procurement or e-Invoicing: Please e-mail us at e-proc@havering.gov.uk
- General procurement: Please e-mail us at procurement@havering.gov.uk