"When organizing public tendering,
there is often little time for
preparations and many demands.
After taking the system into use,
transparency has been enhanced
and tendering competitions have
become more systematic."

Basware automates
Procurement and Finance for City of Helsinki

Basware’s Purchase Management and Invoice Automation
solutions have been catalysts for service center success:
automated invoice and order matching has delivered
a more streamlined organization, while increased transparency has helped regulate and improve the competitive tendering process.

The City of Helsinki, capital of Finland, was looking to optimize its procurement function. Being a public sector customer, competitive bidding procedures and process savings play a key role. The city has a total of 35 offices and institutions and over 12, 500 suppliers with an annual purchasing volume of approximately EUR 1.3 billion.There are approximately 6 000 users creating purchase requisitions or orders and about 50 professional buyers. 

Key Challenges

• Procurement process was not electronic offering only limited spend visibility
• Lack of clear process ownership
• Procurement process time-consuming thus preventing procurement professional to focus on e.g. competitive bidding and identifying preferred suppliers

Assured control
over the entire Purchase-to-Pay process

The City of Helsinki decided to adopt the Basware solution as Software as a Service delivery. Having Basware fully responsible for the maintenance and administration of the software the city's IT ressources are now free to focus on their core competencies.

The goal in the near future is to have all of the city's purchase requisitions entered into the system. Also the use of electronic product catalogues, is estimated to significantly improve the control over the procurement process.

Key Benefits

• Clear ownership of the procurement process by the city’s procurement center
• Vastly improved information transparency on the entire Purchase-to-Pay process
• Electronic product catalogues facilitating procurement and the use of preferred suppliers
• Assured solution quality through Software as a Service with IT resources freed to add additional value