NHS Wales is hoping for £1 million cost savings per year once document management solutions from V1 (formerly Version One) and a range of e-trading solutions are fully live across the health service.
NHS Wales, which operates as a shared service, claims it has already seen productivity triple in the accounts payable team since it started rolling-out V1’s document imaging and invoice data capture solutions in October 2011. The plan is for the solutions to be fully operational and in use by all Health Boards in Wales by the end of 2013.
V1’s solutions were recommended by the health service’s existing Oracle E-Business Suite provider, Patech, when the shared Accounts Payable department identified the need for software solutions that could eliminate time-consuming paper-based invoice processes. The Accounts Payable department processes approximately 1.2 million supplier invoices each year.
According to Said Shadi, Service Manager from NHS Wales: “Using V1’s solutions, invoices are no longer arriving into locations and departments all over the health service where they could get misplaced. Instead, we have full visibility of supplier invoices and know exactly where they are in the purchase-to-pay process. This is, in turn, allowing us to more easily meet our supplier payment targets.”
He also said: “Previously, our clerks were manually processing between 8,000 and 12,000 invoices each year. By cutting manual data entry and reducing the time spent chasing invoices, they are able to process significantly more invoices while freeing-up administration time so that staff costs can be reduced or staff are utilised to can focus on more value-adding tasks.”