The Client
Sightsavers is an international third sector organisation, who work tirelessly to prevent avoidable blindness and to support people with visual impairments in over thirty countries worldwide.
Their Challenge
Procuring goods for projects implemented across the globe is a massive and daunting challenge. When the Standard List project was originally commissioned, many of the processes and systems in place were holding Sightsavers back.
The fees for their procurement software were highly expensive, as they required multiple licenses. The interface of this software was also proving tricky, and could only be used by the product procurement team rather than the requisitioners out in the field, who had to maintain spread sheets and email/phone in requests. Furthermore, the ‘Standard List’ itself was distributed as a paper-based catalogue that required constant revisions and additional products.
Our Solution
We designed an e-procurement portal, which serves as a navigable shop-like interface for those out in the field to request goods, even if they are in low bandwidth areas.
These requests are managed and approved by the product procurement team through an easy-to-use admin interface, whereupon they are sent through to the existing procurement software in bulk – thereby requiring only a single procurement software license.
The procurement team can add or remove products with a click of a button, with shipping rates, exchange rates and many other factors calculated automatically.
The Benefits
Because requests are pooled together and submitted all at once, suppliers offer bulk-buy savings that significantly reduce procurement costs for Sightsavers.
Now that everything is managed through a single intuitive system, Sightsavers saves a considerable amount of time, which was originally spent on managing the resource-intensive procurement process – especially on the collating, construction and distribution of the paper-based catalogue. All users are able to access the Standard List by using their existing active directory logins, saving further effort.