Finance, eProcurement and document management systems to drive new strategy
Urgent Care 24 (Urgent Care) is to save up to four working days a month by implementing integrated finance, eProcurement and document management software from Advanced. The new solutions will support the organisation’s new strategy of devolving greater financial responsibility to budget holders to improve its services. The planned go-live is December 2015.
Urgent Care provides NHS out-of-hours primary care services to 800,000 patients in Halton, Knowsley and Liverpool. The social enterprise has recently significantly increased its turnover and secured a major contract with The North West Ambulance Service NHS Trust. However, the organisation’s existing back-office processes are manually intensive and hindering its continued growth.
Daniel Williamson, Head of Finance at Urgent Care 24, comments, “Our existing system is slow and can no longer provide the level of detail we need. We required leading technology to support our new financial management strategy and help us become a more paper light organisation.
“Advanced’s software was the overwhelming choice as we were impressed by its reporting capabilities and have used its finance system in previous roles so were aware of its quality.”
eFinancials will streamline accounting procedures by eliminating the time-consuming production and consolidation of spreadsheets. Urgent Care’s senior managers will be able to easily compare budgets against actual expenditure at any time and make adjustments to their financial forecasts. The system will also significantly reduce the time it takes to produce budget statements and summary reports and provide enhanced transparency of information.
The document management technology (powered by V1) will replace manual photocopying and the retrieval of purchase orders, delivery notes and purchase invoices which require signatory approval. All related documents will be scanned, tagged to the appropriate financial record and electronically stored in a secure archive. Invoices are then automatically emailed for authorisation to relevant approvers, cutting administrative time and costs.
Furthermore by using the eProcurement solution, staff will be able to electronically order goods and services from a wide range of authorised suppliers, ensuring greater traceability and financial control.
Williamson comments, “Advanced’s solutions will save up to four working days each month by reducing the time it takes us to complete our month-end process. With faster access to more meaningful data we can continue to improve our services to benefit patients in the communities we operate.
“Removing paper will also provide huge efficiencies as it will be at least three years before we need to increase headcount within the finance team. We can now focus on being a greater strategic support function to assist budget holders to make better informed decisions based on accurate information.”
Urgent Care has been using the Adastra clinical patient management solution from Advanced’s sister business, Advanced Health & Care, for ten years to manage episodes of care quickly and safely in unscheduled telephone advice and face-to-face settings.
More than 130 NHS Trusts use Advanced’s eFinancials solution, making it one of the largest suppliers of financial software in this sector.