From paper to procurement effective catalogue creation and ...

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4 4 | C I T I S O F T S O F T W A R E - 2 - U C A S E S T U DY Background The Department for Administrative and Information Services (DAIS), in South Australia purchases a wide range of computer software from Citisoft Software 2 U. The computer software purchased ranges from operating system software and tools to end-user based products required by its business units. The software purchased from Citisoft is outside of the software covered under the SA Government’s Microsoft Select Agreement (i.e. arrangements that cover the purchase of all Microsoft licensed/owned products). Prior to the creation of the electronic catalogue, DAIS buyers would either phone or send an email to Citisoft requesting the availability and price for specific pieces of software. Citisoft would determine the price and availability of the software and then send this information to DAIS by email or by making a phone call. DAIS would then use the E-Purchase SA system and manually enter the product information and send a purchase order by facsimile to Citisoft. Citisoft would then source the software and deliver it to DAIS and then send a paper invoice to DAIS for payment. Revised arrangements Under the new method DAIS logs on to E-Purchase SA and accesses the Citisoft catalogue on the marketplace to find the piece of software that they are looking for. If the piece of software that DAIS wants to purchase is not listed on the catalogue they will then send an email or telephone as previously done. This can happen as DAIS may wish to purchase a piece of software that Citisoft has never sourced, but because of Citisoft’s wide range of software contacts can still be sourced on DAIS’s behalf. Once DAIS has found the software they need on the catalogue or by manually typing the product information onto the purchase order, the order is sent electronically to the order processing section of the marketplace and Citisoft receives an email alert that a new order has arrived. A staff member then accesses the marketplace and views the order. This order detail is then entered into Citisoft’s internal Sybiz accounting system and the software is sourced (if not already in stock) and delivered to DAIS. Delivery of the item triggers the creation of the invoice for DAIS. This invoice is printed out and Citisoft then accesses the marketplace to send an electronic invoice. To do this, the order associated with the invoice is found, the invoice template is selected, the specific invoice details entered and an electronic invoice is sent back to the E-Purchase SA system. Establishing and maintaining the catalogue Citisoft’s existing accounting system, Sybiz is the source of all product and pricing information for the software that Citisoft sells. Citisoft and a local IT consultant, Mr Ken Sellick, worked with Sensis to understand the product information and data loading formats required by the marketplace. Mr Sellick then used an ODBC connector to extract the required product information from Sybiz into a spreadsheet format specified by the marketplace, allowing this product information to be imported directly into the marketplace. This allows for quick and easy updating of the product information on the marketplace whenever Citisoft requires. Citisoft envisage that this would probably happen on a monthly basis.
Immediate benefits The following intangible benefits from the revised system have been identified and quoted by Citisoft: • DAIS buyers can look at the catalogue and see if the item that they want to purchase is already listed or not. If not, they will then call or email as discussed above, but this is now the minority of transactions. • DAIS send the order to the marketplace where it can be viewed on-line instead of receiving the order by facsimile. • When the order arrives they can be easily entered into Citisoft systems because the product codes are known and are correct as they originated from the catalogue information. • “The catalogue update process has been enabled to allow us to quickly and easily download the product information from internal systems into the correct format to update the list of products and prices”. • Citisoft can use the on-line invoice capability to return an electronic invoice to DAIS’s E-Purchase SA system. If prices have not altered and the requested goods have been delivered, the order will be passed automatically into the buyer’s financial systems for payment. (Electronic invoices do not get lost in a buyer’s or accounts payable staff member’s in-tray). The following tangible benefits have been achieved and quoted from Citisoft: • The catalogue has reduced the number of telephone calls between DAIS and Citisoft as the majority of items requested can be immediately found on the electronic catalogue. “Some telephone calls are still required as not all the software DAIS requires is immediately available on our catalogue. One of the small problems that we have encountered is with the accuracy of software pricing which is due to the nature of the software business. Prices and versions of software change frequently and often the current pricing for specific software is not known until the order is placed”. • The ability to receive purchase orders electronically has some benefits as it reduces the volume of orders received by facsimile which would lead to cost savings in facsimile consumables and paper. This would be only a tiny benefit to Citisoft at this stage but if more customers could transact in this way the savings would grow. Next steps At this stage there are minimal further steps that Citisoft would consider taking. DAIS is currently the only SA Government buyer using the E-Purchase SA system. If this was to grow and other clients started to use similar systems, Citisoft would consider undertaking some further activities. For example, Citisoft is already extracting product information from Sybiz to load into the marketplace catalogue. The next stage would be to look at further enhancing Sybiz to enable orders to be automatically entered and for the system to generate invoices to be sent directly back to E- Purchase SA without the need to use the marketplace. With regard to the catalogue itself, Citisoft already have an on-line catalogue allowing the general public to purchase software. This system does not have the punch-out capability in-built. Citisoft could consider enhancing or redeveloping the catalogue to include this functionality. F R O M P A P E R T O P R O C U R E M E N T – E F F E C T I V E C A T A L O G U E C R E A T I O N A N D M A N A G E M E N T F O R E N G A G I N G B U Y E R S A N D S U P P L I E R S | 4 5 APPENDIX I
Page 1 and 2: F R O M P A P E R T O P R O C U R E
Page 3 and 4: C O N T E N T S INTRODUCTION 5 ALIG
Page 5 and 6: This guide is designed to help you,
Page 7 and 8: Getting Past the Hype As electronic
Page 9 and 10: W H A T I S A N E L E C T R O N I C
Page 11 and 12: T H E B U S I N E S S P R O B L E M
Page 13 and 14: W H Y S H O U L D C A T A L O G U E
Page 15 and 16: Hosting Solutions There are a numbe
Page 17 and 18: A number of e-procurement scenarios
Page 19 and 20: then able to add these items to a s
Page 21 and 22: Steps and Checklists Let’s assume
Page 23 and 24: Items to Measure As far as the cost
Page 25 and 26: What is cost of maintaining the non
Page 27 and 28: What is cost of interfacing electro
Page 29 and 30: EAN/UCC EAN is well known for setti
Page 31 and 32: S T E P 4 - D E V E L O P I N G YO
Page 33 and 34: External Links External links relat
Page 35 and 36: Supplier Hosted Content You can hos
Page 37 and 38: A P P E N D I X I C A S E S T U D I
Page 39 and 40: —Advantages of E-Purchase SA 57
Page 41 and 42: (Open Catalogue Interface) standard
Page 43: planning the mapping between two sy
Page 47 and 48: Benefits Content was loaded into th
Page 49 and 50: Cyberlynx Supplier Hub & Westpac Qv
Page 51 and 52: They could not be made available on
Page 53 and 54: Establishing and Maintaining the Ca
Page 55 and 56: The fact that the buyers are using
Page 57 and 58: Purchase orders Once the requisitio
Page 59 and 60: The Westpac Marketplace provides th
Page 61 and 62: C A S E S T U DY F O R A I S H D A
Page 63 and 64: • The e-catalogue has the capacit
Page 65 and 66: • The catalogue is easily amended
Page 67 and 68: A P P E N D I X I I C L A S S I F I
Page 69 and 70: E C L @ S S Although still evolving
Page 71 and 72: R U S RUS (Requisite Unifying Struc
Page 73 and 74: A P P E N D I X I I I G L O S S A R
Page 75 and 76: Term Definition Punch-Out Punch-out

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