Scanning and invoicing services

Tender description

Crown Commercial Service as the Authority is putting in place a Pan Government Collaborative Framework Agreement for use by UK public sector bodies identified at VI.3) (and any future successors to these organisations), which include Central Government Departments and their Arm's Length Bodies and Agencies, Non Departmental Public Bodies, NHS bodies and Local Authorities. The above Public Sector Bodies have a need for PEPPOL Access Point Services for the electronic exchange of business documentation including invoices and purchase orders. ‘PEPPOL (Pan-European Public Procurement Online)’ was initiated in 2008 with the aim of simplifying electronic procurement across borders by developing technology standards that could be implemented across all governments within Europe. The overall objective was to enable businesses to communicate electronically with any government institution in the procurement process, increasing efficiencies and reducing costs. This procurement will give access to PEPPOL Standards-based IT Transport Infrastructure through Access Points, and the services provided for eProcurement with standardised electronic document formats. Department of Health have publicly committed to the adoption of PEPPOL across all NHS Trusts. The implementation of PEPPOL is intended to remove unnecessary process inefficiencies which arise during the transfer of business documents. It is estimated that the current process requires significant manual intervention. It is also means that a single supplier wishing to trade with the NHS may have to accept 150 different formats of purchase orders. The adoption of a single standard allows customers to exchange these business documents through a single ‘Access Point’. The process reduces complexity and costs for the contracting body and for the provider using what is commonly known as a 4 corner model. This allows the contracting body and the provider to select their own Access Point Provide with PEPPOL mandating that information passes between the 2. A key feature of the PEPPOL network is the freedom for suppliers to engage with an Access Point provider of their choice, to send and receive electronic documents with any organisation in the PEPPOL network through 1 single source, eliminating complex relationships with buyers, their service providers and related obligations. The network is governed by the PEPPOL Transport Infrastructure Agreements, establishing a many-to-many legal framework instead of the traditional bilateral agreements entered into between service providers. The documents are routed through Access Points and the receiver's capabilities can be discovered by using the PEPPOL Service Metadata Publisher (SMP) services. The content and validation rules ensure consistency for all parties. It is estimated that anywhere between 0,48 GBP and 5,40 GBP can be saved per transaction each year (this is dependent on the current systems and how paper-reliant current processes are). For the Department of Health, if all Trusts were to on-board, this would result in savings of between 12,5 GBP and 135m GBP in savings each year. This money could be better spent elsewhere providing the National Health Service to UK taxpayers. In addition, a further catalyst for this procurement is Directive 2014/55/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council on e-Invoicing which states that the public sector organisations of all European members must be able to send and receive an electronic invoice in a structure format by November 2018. The PEPPOL Standard will ensure that the Department of Health and other Contracting Bodies are compliant with the terms of this EU Directive which is intended to make the relationship between public sector organisations and their suppliers simpler, more secure and more cost effective. While other contracting bodies will not be mandated to use the PEPPOL standard, this Framework Agreement will provide them with a route to comply with that Directive 2014/55/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council. A detailed description of the services that a provider will be required to supply is set out at Schedule 2 of Attachment 4 Framework Agreement. The following services are not within the scope of this Framework Agreement: Archiving services; Invoice Retrieval; Remapping; Buyer connection. The duration referred to in section II.1.4) is 2 years plus the option for 2 12-month extensions (potentially a 4-year total framework). Crown Commercial Service reserves the right for an electronic auction to be held by Public Sector bodies during further competition among the parties to the Framework Agreement(s).