Page 18 - HPH News June 2017

Central Support – Sevenoaks

Procurement

For the last few months the main focus for the Procurement department has been wizards,
not the one below but Procure Wizard.

For all the 312 users that have not been involved, this is an electronic purchasing and
payment system which will make ordering simpler, ensure we purchase from the correct
suppliers and pay the agreed prices.

All 17 mainland hotels were trained in May and the system went live on 22 May.

This was both exciting and challenging as inevitably there were a few hiccups.

In Phase One - 97% of all food, beverage, housekeeping and general suppliers were loaded
onto the system. Phase – 2 will be the remaining suppliers and Phase 3 – Channel Islands
will follow in due course.

All 5 members of the Procurement team were involved in the setup and launch – Angela
Shilling, new member of staff – Claire Short, Kerry Elliott and Lisa Court. Everyone did a
fantastic job.

We were ably assisted by our colleagues in Finance – Vincent Chan and Nick Staines, also
Matt Ashton – Group Exec Head Chef - a big thank you to them all.

The attendance at the 2 weeks intensive training in May for all 17 mainland hotels was
excellent and the system was well received by all. Thank you to all attendees.

We are now in week 5 since the system went live on 22 May. A large number of credits have
already been raised against suppliers where invoices do not match the prices set up in the
system. This process of course was not happening previously and will generate substantial
savings as predicted.

I am also looking forward to obtaining management information in the coming months.

I have been waiting over 11 years to actually receive meaningful data!!!