Vale of Aylesbury Housing goes live with Proactis

Vale of Aylesbury Housing is a not for profit Registered Social Landlord providing affordable homes for over 15,000 people. The company employs more than 200 people and has a turnover of £35m.

Barry Dale explains their reasons for seeking a purchase to pay system:

"Our systems were paper intensive and lacked visibility. They were time consuming to maintain and not always as effective as they needed to be...

.. We were looking to provide budget holders with a better understanding of what had been spent and what had been committed. We wanted to allocate costs correctly, upfront rather than after the event...

.. Our three main objectives were, firstly improve transaction processing, secondly control expenditure and thirdly provide greater visibility, particularly with regard to approvals."

Systems Selection

Systems selection was a two stage process.

"An initial round of demonstrations gave us a feel for what we could expect from a new system, following which a detailed specification was produced. This was a combination of functional requirements and criteria for evaluating potential suppliers."

In common with many organisations in the social housing sector, the company operates a financial management system based on Infor SunSystems.

"We narrowed our search down to two systems known to work with SunSystems...

.. Proactis was chosen because our users preferred its look and feel and because there were some useful features that the alternative did not have."

Positive Outcomes

Following a successful implementation of Proactis Purchase-to-Pay, Barry Dale makes the following observations:

"Proactis has been well received and quite popular. The users were surprised how easy it is to use. It has helped spread the word as we roll the system out further...

.. Managers have seen definite improvements too. The ability to approve purchase requests from mobile devices is particularly useful...

.. One of the major benefits has been the availability of scanned copies of invoices. We used to have to send people off to go and find printed documents. Now they don't have to."