HBOS zips up latest phase of procurement project

Banking giant HBOS has completed the latest phase of a supplier relationship management project which is key to achieving the cost savings the company promised would flow from the merger of Halifax and Bank of Scotland.

The bank has added data feeds from Dunn & Bradstreet to its supplier relationship management system (SRM) to give procurement staff ready access to credit ratings information on 20,000 suppliers to help them calculate the risk of doing business with a particular company.

The supplier risk management phase is the latest addition to the SRM system, which was launched in 2002 to help create the cost savings promised to the City at the time of the merger by allowing the company to create a single view of procurement information.

Last year HBOS spent £2.5bn on purchasing products and services - ranging from IT systems and ATMs to pencils - so significant savings can be achieved by ensuring the bank's various brands are getting the best value from their spending.

The SRM system, using software from Kalido to build an enterprise data warehouse, provides purchasing and supplier information from across the HBOS subsidiaries for analysis by the procurement team, with data reaching back to 2001.

Data extract, transfer and load tools from Ascential are deployed to handle initial data preparation, and Business Objects business intelligence software is used for reporting and analysis.

Since the project was launched it has also been extended to HBOS subsidiaries including Birmingham Midshires, Clerical Medical, and Halifax Life and Pensions.

HBOS procurement systems specialist Sharon Reason told silicon.com the system helps procurement teams by bringing the information they need together: "It gives more power to the negotiations and saves time. They know where the money has been spent with each supplier on each commodity in each business area, which is quite powerful in itself."

She added: "Procurement staff only need to go to one place for their data. They don't have to go out and search for it. We want people going out and doing their procurement role."

Reason said the latest system developments are not the end of the story: over the next few years HBOS will be adding more data sources to provide more information to procurement teams.