British Olympic Association gears up
e-Procurement function with Touchstone Group
12 December 2006: The British Olympic
Association (BOA) selects Team GB from the best sportsmen and women
who will go on to compete in the 28 summer and seven winter Olympic
sports at the greatest sporting competition in the world.
In the build up to the 2012 Olympics, BOA has
placed an order with business consultancy, Touchstone Group for the
implementation of a PROACTIS e-procurement system. The solution
will deliver considerable procurement control, including enhanced
reporting capabilities across the organisation.
The BOA provides the pivot around which Team
GB revolves prior to and during the Olympic Games. It is also in
charge of taking the British team to each and every Olympics, and
all associated administrative and logistical functions. Prior to
its implementation of the PROACTIS software from Touchstone Group,
BOA had been operating with a manual paper based system which
significantly slowed down all of the organisation’s administration
and reporting functions.
Howard Beeston, Finance Director, British
Olympic Association, comments, “Our old system was very outdated;
we operated primarily with paper and, as a result, were open to
human error in the recording of our transactions. From a financial
perspective, this meant that there was no central visibility of
what we had committed to, and made management reporting extremely
difficult, time-consuming and often, inaccurate. We discussed our
requirements with Touchstone Group and they offered us the PROACTIS
solution which is very user-friendly and, we anticipate, will
greatly improve our ease of administration. The Touchstone Group
solution should ultimately provide greater structure to help manage
our expenditure with superior information that we have simply not
had before.”
Beeston continues, “We have a strong
relationship with Touchstone Group from previously working together
and have already placed our next order for some training for a
management reporting system we have held in-house for some time,
but not maximised. We continue to return to Touchstone Group
because they constantly deliver specifically to our business needs.
We are a large organisation and, as we continue to expand and
develop our business processes, it’s reassuring to know that
Touchstone Group is always on hand and one step ahead.”
Adrian McNay, Group Board Director,
Touchstone Group, concludes, “We pride ourselves on building close
and long-lasting relationships with our clients that enable them to
achieve on-going, incremental business change. BOA is an
organisation who recognises the value of this approach and will
certainly achieve the maximum value from their technology
investments as a result.”