Regional Development

Regional Development Via Better Public Sector Efficiency

eBuilder can make a contribution to enhanced public sector efficiency, and therefore to regional development.

There is an urgent need to modernize and rationalize the public sector so it can produce and continue to develop the public services and infrastructure that will continue to support the welfare of society and attract the coming generations of citizens and modern businesses in a global perspective. Similarly, there is a need to support regional development by better enabling the participation of small and medium sized businesses (SMEs) to take part in public-sector bidding. 

Reduced Operating Costs

Public services handle an ever increasing load of workflow-oriented processes that are increasingly dependent on external parties. Cloud Processes automate the interaction within and among parties and implement basic administrative tasks to free up time for performing value-added services for citizens.

eBuilder's Cloud Processes automate more than 50% of the manual administration in handling business transactions for procurement, travel, inbound/outbound order fulfillment, after sales/customer care, and financial transactions. Specialized generic processes can be customized to reflect the legal and regulatory frameworks for childcare, social welfare, approval processes, etc.

Reduced Costs for Sourcing

Cloud Processes enable full transparency in the procurement-ordering-delivery-financial transactions flow, thus enabling you to consolidate purchasing and enforce the correct workflow and logistics consolidation to optimize the cost and quality for sourcing. In most cases, a 3-15% reduction of the cost is achieved. This is an opportunity to build shared service centers for regions where local counties, health care, and government agencies consolidate their activities for serving citizens. We see a trend in the creation of such regional centers of excellence that serve multiple public organizations.

The environmental parameters are monitored and accounted for according to the public sector’s environmental policy.

Enhanced Public Service Dexterity

The ability to handle dynamic complexity will have a vital impact on the ability to create an eco-friendly/sustainable operation and citizen satisfaction with services. This is an even greater challenge when most public organizations are increasingly dependent on external collaborating parties (the Value Network) in delivering citizen satisfaction. This is a function of increased complexity in rules and organization, and the increased degree of dependence on private suppliers. Cloud Processes integrate and control the value-added activities in the Value Network, and they link them to the often complex internal IT systems and internal value network. Local counties in Sweden, for instance, have hundreds of different IT systems. The public sector rules and terms and conditions that govern the value-added activities are managed centrally by the operational, tactical, and strategic functions in the Cloud Process to optimize the performance and to adapt to changes.

Lean Change Management

The requirements for running a public sector organization are increasingly dynamic in our rapidly and unpredictably changing environment. This includes changes depending on political and organizational decisions. The ability to react to these changes will have a vital impact on the overall performance of the ability to perform and deliver public services. With the Cloud Process centrally managed Business Rules and Master Data, public service processes and terms and conditions between the participants in the Value Network can be changed and deployed internally and externally within days.

Reduce the Amount of Capital Tied Up in Assets

Leveraging the shortened lead times enabled by end-to-end connectivity, you can reengineer the business process and implement “on demand” sourcing and reduce the number of consolidation points for physical goods, thus reducing the amount of capital you have tied up in assets.

In most cases, Cloud Processes enable “on demand" sourcing for a large part of goods and services the company needs, while maintaining or improving customer service levels and reducing corporate expense by lowering the amount of capital employed. Strategies like “Vendor Managed Inventory” and outsourcing of order fulfillment are methods used to leverage Cloud Process capabilities.

For the public sector, which is a major buyer of goods and services, this can significantly reduce of the amount of capital tied up, especially within the sector of expensive and critical goods such as medicines and other pharmaceutical goods.

Cloud Processes reduce the up-front payments required to implement operational IT support. Payments are synchronized with usage, and the costs are offset by the operational rationalization. The only up-front payment is a connection fee and, if applicable, a unique customization fee. In this way, the payments are "paid for" by the rationalization and tax income.

Improved Service to Citizens

Cloud Processes for the Value Network enables the public sector to increase the level of service to citizens by providing automation and instant e-services. This is applicable on a wide range of statutory and local approval processes, as well as on interpublic sector processes, for instance, between local counties and health care regions in an end-to-end health care process.

A local county, health care region, or a governmental organization that uses Cloud Processes will be able to produce the services it provides  faster, cheaper, and with higher quality. This is especially important for public services in less densely populated areas.

Better Information for Decision Making Helps Regional  Development

eBuilder Cloud Process dashboards provide the operational, tactical and strategic management of the assets and services handled in the Cloud Process. This gives the respective areas of responsibility the basis on which to make the well-grounded decisions needed to monitor the agreed upon key performance indicators and service level agreements, key factors in creating and maintaining  competitive services. The need for relevant up-to-date information for decision making is met by deploying Cloud Processes, which connect your value networks. They automatically monitor business events (business activity monitoring) in the entire value network and present relevant data on operational, tactical, and strategic levels together with business intelligence functionality that combines real-time business events into clearly presented statistics for improved business decision making. The information is based on a validated database of historical and transactional information that has been quality assured by the Cloud Process business process network filtering and QA processes.

This takes management of the public sector to a new level by focusing on business intelligence parameters imposed by law or set as goals by management, on deviations from contracted KPIs, and on improvements rather than managing and monitoring operational transaction issues that have little or no value for the citizen consumer of the services. We call this e-Government.

Shorter Lead Time in Operational Processes

Cloud Processes enable online connectivity end-to-end, access to operational, tactical, and strategic information and best-practice business rules. At the same time, resources are freed up from trivial administrative tasks and can be used to handle deviations and improvements. This, together with Cloud Process Improvement Services, leads to shorter lead times in business processes, often in the range of 10-90%.

These reductions are remarkable, and they are a result of capabilities in the Cloud Process that enable the end-to-end, automatic business activity monitoring and ensures that the information is of sufficient quality and that its flow is uninterrupted in the end-to-end business process. This enables faster, but always monitored, movement of the physical assets.

Because the public sector is dependent on political decisions and on the increasing complex network of internal and external producers and partners, Cloud Processes are the most efficient means of creating and maintaining "best-in-class" public services. 

EU’s PEPPOL Project Boosts Regional Development

On October 19, 2010, The Swedish National Financial Management Authority (Ekonomistyrningsverket (ESV)) announced their intention of signing a contract with eBuilder Sweden AB for delivery and operation of the Swedish Gateway to the PEPPOL (Pan-European Public Procurement Online) infrastructure.

“Of course we are delighted to have won the competition for this important contract,” says Lars Ringsby, Senior Vice President of Business Development at eBuilder. Lars Ringsby continues, “PEPPOL is a prestigious project within the European Union (EU), and the fact that we have been chosen to deliver and operate the Swedish Gateway is proof of the excellence of our Procurement Cloud Process. This is a natural step following  the successful completion of the eTen PROCURE project, in which eBuilder developed the prototype for all the participants in the project. A positive spin off is that all our existing customers are now prepared for trans-European commerce.”

The PEPPOL — A Pan-European E-Procurement Project

PEPPOL is an EU project aimed at introducing more efficient, harmonized electronic procurement and invoicing processes among the nations in the PEPPPOL Consortium. The project will also be a catalyst for introducing eBusiness in companies and for speeding up the overall uptake of new technologies. It will facilitate cross border procurement and help governments to achieve lower costs, higher transparency, easier access, and an integrated workflow within electronic procurement.

Governments are the largest buyers in the European Union, but they lag behind major industries in electronic data exchange with suppliers „Ÿ government purchases in the European Union account for around 16 % of GDP, which is equal to 1,500 Billion Euros. Governments want to be able to handle key processes with their suppliers such as tenders, orders, delivery notes, catalogues, invoices, and payments electronically. But the lack of common standards for electronic data exchange are an obstacle for companies to participate, without barriers, in the public procurement processes.

EU member states have previously expressed the intention to change public procurement significantly. The Manchester ministerial declaration of 24 November 2005 for example states that “by 2010 all public administrations across Europe will have the capability of carrying out 100 % of their procurement electronically and at least 50 % of public procurement above the EU public procurement threshold will be carried out electronically.” The PEPPOL project strongly supports achieving this target.

Vision and Objectives

The broader vision of PEPPOL is that any company in the EU, including SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises), can communicate electronically with any EU governmental institution for all procurement processes. The objective of the PEPPOL project is to set up a pan-European pilot solution that, together with existing national solutions, facilitates EU-wide interoperable public eProcurement. The vision of the PEPPOL project is that any company in the EU, and in particular SMEs, will be able to communicate electronically with any European governmental institution for the entire procurement process. The final outcome of PEPPOL will be an inter-operational environment built upon national systems and infrastructures supporting the full cycle of eProcurement activities.

The pilots to be developed in PEPPOL will enable any company in the EU and the European Economic Area (EEA) to respond to any published public tender notice electronically and will govern the entire procurement process. In this way, PEPPOL will focus on the engagement and participation of SME companies in public eProcurement. It is hoped that this will stimulate regional development.

Source: www.peppol.eu.

About the eTen PROCURE Project 

The eTen PROCURE project starts from the premise that it is better for public authorities within a region to share an e-procurement platform and create a one-stop shop for public contract bidding. 

• Businesses don’t have to monitor multiple sites and submit responses in different formats.
• Enables higher response rates to tenders.
• Potential for joint tenders among several authorities.
• Wider participation among SMEs.
• Greater competition for contracts means more innovative bids and less costly contracts.
• Costs of platform maintenance and development are shared among authorities.

Funded by the eTen program, PROCURE has developed regional e-procurement platforms in five pilot regions. The regions of Uddevalla (Sweden), Brittany (France), and Piedmont (Italy) all have focused communication strategies to improve their usage.  Regional platforms were deployed from scratch in the regions of Central Bohemia (Czech Republic)  and Guadeloupe (France).