SUPPLY CHAIN PARTNER
“They’ re a trusted advisor, taking the customer’ s business spend processes to the next level”
Martin Veldhof Regional Vice President Alliances & Partnerships, Coupa
processes governing public – sector and utility procurement.
“ The key challenge was basically the introduction of the UK Procurement Act 2023 and the requirement to connect to the central digital platform, and that was something that wasn’ t natively present within Coupa,” says David Dolan, Associate Director at Supply Chain Partner.
The issue was not entirely new. Before the Procurement Act 2023( PA23), the Utilities Contracts Regulations 2016( UCR 2016) had created a similar requirement, leaving a gap between Coupa and the systems used to publish procurement notices.
For Sarah Kingdom-Evans, Senior Account Director at Coupa, the introduction of the new legislation added another layer of complexity.
“ There was also a lot of confusion around the whole PA23 introduction and the way the notices were being moved, it was work in progress for a long time,” she reflects.“ So that made it hard for both the customer and the SCP team developing UNIO to know which notices needed to come in, and which were applicable to the utility sector.”
A solution built around the client The opportunity emerged through Coupa’ s relationship with the Metropolitan Police, which was already using the platform. The organisation was publishing procurement notices manually, requiring teams to repeatedly enter information and upload notices.
“ That’ s how the UNIO app was originally thought up: how we could take the information they’ d already got within the system and then publish it compliantly,” says Sarah.“ That’ s exactly what UNIO is: the bridge between the Coupa system and sending it over to the compliant notice area.”
Coupa approached SCP to explore how the gap could be addressed. SCP then worked with the client to develop a solution that could connect Coupa with the relevant public-sector processes, initially around the UCR 2016 requirements before evolving to address the Procurement Act 2023.
The development was deliberately collaborative. SCP led much of the design and technical work, while Coupa’ s technical team provided support around the platform architecture. The client was also closely involved in determining how the functionality should fit into existing procurement processes.
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