Kier Marriot Group, one of the ‘early adopters’ of COINS electronic trading capabilities, like many other COINS-etc clients started their usage of electronic trading with supplier e-invoicing. Not only is this the most obvious starting point, but also the benefits are clear and tangible, including reduced transaction costs (post room, document distribution and filing/archiving) and elimination of time & errors in re-keying data, allowing accounts staff to focus on exceptions.

One of the early lessons learned was that however obvious and significant the benefits of a new way of working, many people will resist change simply because it takes them out of their comfort zone. Kier found that this was true both within its own divisions and with suppliers.

They thus changed their implementation strategy from one which included all divisions and unlimited suppliers to one which focused on the top 12 suppliers (by volume of invoices) within divisions where there was enthusiastic support for the project.

Based on this strategy, they embarked on an ambitious but achievable roll out plan of one division per week, starting in September 2006 with the ‘enthusiasts’. Not surprisingly these early implementations all completed within the target ‘go live’ date whereas most later rollouts missed their go live dates by varying amounts dependent on the degree of enthusiasm versus resistance to change. Kier Marriott Construction, one of the early pilots on e-invoicing now has well over 50% of its invoicing received from suppliers electronically. Having captured the immediate benefits of e-invoicing, Kier were still left with the age old quality problem that if errors are only identified at the invoicing stage, it is left to the accounts department to try to sort them out, whereas the vast majority of the issues arise at the origination stage, i.e. within ordering and procurement.

Eliminating errors from processes rather than ‘inspecting’ them out at the end requires Kier to integrate e-procurement with e-invoicing through their electronic COINS-etc. capability.

By implementing the COINS ‘open’ order system and matching COINS codes to supplier codes, they can capture all of the transaction details within their core COINS system, enabling early warning of call-off errors, real time visibility of purchases, and thus a reduction in the number of invoice queries through identifying the errors at source.