Scanning and invoicing services

Tender description

Crown Commercial Service as the Authority has put 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 includes 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 gives access to PEPPOL Standards-based IT Transport Infrastructure through Access Points, and the services provided for eProcurement with standardised electronic document formats. The Department of Health has publicly committed to the adoption of PEPPOL across all NHS Trusts. The implementation of PEPPOL was intended to remove unnecessary process inefficiencies which arose during the transfer of business documents. It was estimated that the current processes require significant manual intervention. It also meant that a single supplier wishing to trade with the NHS may have had to accept 150 different formats of purchase order. The adoption of this 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 one single source, eliminating complex relationships with buyers, their service providers and related obligations. The network is governed by the PEPPOL Transport Infrastructure Agreements, which establishes 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 135 000 000 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 was intended to make the relationship between public sector organisations and their suppliers simpler, more secure and more cost effective. While other Contracting Bodies are not 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. 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.1.40) 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).