1. January 2015 http://www.cobraco.co.uk/ Page 1 of 2
Procure-to-Pay: Optimisation &
Improvement (Healthcare)
Providing high quality healthcare at an affordable price is a constant challenge, especially in an era
of financial pressures. Healthcare Procurement and Finance have significant roles to play in both
securing high quality goods, services and equipment at best value for money / cost savings.
Recent research by Deloitte1
highlighted that procurement departments face many challenges
including poor quality data, limitation on spend analysis, outdated processes, skills gaps and poor
adoption of technology, this naturally impacts on invoice processing within finance.
Cobraco’s POPI is a collaborative service which delivers sustainable and measureable
improvements and savings across all aspects of the Procure-to-Pay (P2P) process.
Key Challenges for Healthcare Procure-to-Pay
In the UK a roundtable of NHS Procurement Leaders were unanimous that “procurement needs to
be seen from a strategic perspective, delivering value and not just viewed as a savings mechanism”2
.
They also cited the important matter of clinical choice and engaging healthcare professionals in
certain sourcing decisions, collaboration between healthcare organisations and supply chain risk
management.
At an organisations level Deloitte1
highlighted critical issues about attracting and retaining talent into
the procurement field as well as the ongoing need for cost control; it reinforced the need for
procurement to be strategic partner and add value. Improving the user-experience in relation to P2P
systems was highlighted, as was inadequacies in spend analysis.
According to Aberdeen3
, despite the availability of technology that can drastically reduce the
mountains of paperwork and inefficiencies
plaguing accounts payable, few companies have
addressed accounts payable transformation like
other processes essential to the business.
POPI Solution
POPI offers a proven continuous improvement
methodology applied to the P2P process.POPIbrings together a number of consulting services from
Cobraco, as well as leveraging our business partners’ solutions and capabilities.
1
The Deloitte Global CPO Survey 2014. www.deloitte.co.uk/cposurvey2014
2 Health Service Journal,UK. 22 October 2014
3 Aberdeen Group: E-Payables 2010:The Strategic Value of Accounts Payable Automation
What are we tying to
achieve?
How will we know
we have improved?
What changes can
we do?

2. January 2015 http://www.cobraco.co.uk/ Page 2 of 2
POPI methodology is summarised under the Plan-Do-Check-Act
improvement cycle:
Plan: Using Spend Analysis, based on existing business intelligence or provided by cloudBuy,
augmented through stakeholder workshops, POPI will highlight improvement opportunities and then
agree objectives, processes, desired outcomes and associated benefits. Plans are established and
resources, from both customer and Cobraco, secured. “THINK BIG, but start small” is a great moto,
typically we breakdown the improvement journey into manageable elements - usually Contracts,
People (skills, leadership), Process Improvement or Technology.
Do: During this stage the Plan is executed. Through strong project
management and benefits management the desired outcomes should be
achieved. Data is collected for subsequent analysis.
Check: An important step, which is often be overlooked. Using
cloudBuy Analytics and other data, POPI will compare the planned vs.
expected results. Any variations are identified, explored - including their
root causes and lessons learnt. Corrective actions are agreed.
Act: Here any corrective actions are implemented. Further improvements are identified as part of
the next cycle of improvement.
Benefits of using POPI
 Evidence based cost savings
 More influence on procurement spend
 Greater compliance with policy
 Products & supplier rationalisation
 Improved procurement teams skills
 Better user-experience of P2P systems
 Cost saving in transaction processing
 Appraise success of outsourced sourcing
CloudBuy Analytics transforms existing data,
addressing data quality issues and master data
through its artificial intelligence. Presenting this
information flexibly helps to highlight potential
improvement areas - “Insight to Action” and monitor
the realisation of benefits. Benchmarking is available
by alignment with anonymized intelligence from a
global healthcare community.
A few simple extracts of invoice, contract and
purchase data is all that is required for cloudBuy
Analytics to match products and suppliers, analyze
procurement metrics, and deliver back a rich set of
reports and analysis – empowering both procurement
and management teams to make better business
decisions and save money.
Contact Us: Simon.Instone@cobraco.co.uk | +44 773 5050 339