James Dodds, Project Manager, e-procurement, awg plc (Anglian Water),
Anglian Water is one of the top 10 UK water utilities. It represents the largest geographical area within the UK of any utility. In the UK we have something like four and a half thousand employees and in recent years weve expanded overseas and now have an equal size overseas as our UK presence.

Nirmal Kotecha Head of Supply Chain Management, awg plc (Anglian Water)
We are now no longer just an East Anglian water company, but a broad brushed asset management company with interests not only in the UK but overseas as well.

Peter Oliver, Programme Director, e-business, awg plc (Anglian Water)
The main benefit of implementing SAP originally was in terms of year 2000 compliance. It replaced some 26 existing Legacy systems.

James Dodds, Project Manager, e-procurement, awg plc (Anglian Water)
Key benefits clearly would be for us, would be the integration issue, the fact that we have HR finance procurement and project systems fully integrated now.

Julie Hyne, Technical Clerk, awg plc (Anglian Water)
Ive used SAP since it was first introduced at Anglian Water, which is about four years ago. Im quite a high user. I actually like SAP. I find it very easy to use and I can get everything I need from the system.

James Dodds, Project Manager, e-procurement, awg plc (Anglian Water)
We initially went live with an SAP R 3 system back in September 98 and then theyve just done an upgrade in 2001, in January and are now doing e-Procurement.

Nirmal Kotecha Head of Supply Chain Management, awg plc (Anglian Water)
We have a comprehensive e-Strategy across the group and one of the key parts of that is our e-Procurement strategy. We spend several million pounds a year, and its our intention to try and: a) make sure we do that in a professional manner, and to b) use the technology thats emerging to its fullest.

James Dodds, Project Manager, e-procurement, awg plc (Anglian Water)
The group as a whole was keen to be seen to be doing something in the procurement area. Anglian Water chose Enterprise Buyer from SAP for our e-Procurement solution for a number of a reasons; not least of which is that in fact our ERP system is SAP R/3. Also the Achilles marketplace of which we were an early adopter and which is our chosen marketplace from which we do all our trading sits on the SAP SAP.com platform.

Nirmal Kotecha Head of Supply Chain Management, awg plc (Anglian Water)
Supplier adoption, in its sort of generic sense has probably proved to be the most challenging aspect of our e-Procurement strategy.

James Dodds, Project Manager, e-procurement, awg plc (Anglian Water)
So its taken a little bit to get the suppliers on board. Thats not an uncommon finding of any e-Procurement implementation. I think weve done exceptionally well on the large number of suppliers weve got on board and as weve developed that large number it does become self-fulfilling.

Nirmal Kotecha Head of Supply Chain Management, awg plc (Anglian Water)
Its brought together all these buyers. Its brought together a lot of like-minded people. So I now have access to my opposite numbers in most of the major utility companies and we have a collective goal and a collective aim.

James Dodds, Project Manager, e-procurement, awg plc (Anglian Water)
This is not a technology driven project. If anything its a business driven project. Wherever possible weve taken Anglian Water employees out of their day jobs. They understand a lot more about what the project is and what the project drivers are.

Julie Hyne, Technical Clerk, awg plc (Anglian Water)
I was involved from the start and I was able to say that wed find this bit useful, you know, or something else would be handy and Ive sort of evolved from there.

Peter Oliver, Programme Director, e-business, awg plc (Anglian Water)
The strategy for the project was to have two releases: we ran a pilot scheme back in March that delivered then to 15 users, on time, in fact it was 2 or 3 days early and under budget. The big milestone for us now is in mid July when we hope to implement release two of the project that will set about making the project available to 500 users around the business.

Julie Hyne, Technical Clerk, awg plc (Anglian Water)
Enterprise buyer is going to help people that dont use, sort of purchase systems so much because theres so much less to learn. With SAP, unless youre a regular user you soon forget, you know, where youre supposed to be but with this, you know its so simple, that you know if youre not using it that often, you know you will remember what to do.

Peter Oliver, Programme Director, e-business, awg plc (Anglian Water)
Infrequent users I think are going to benefit from the ease of use of the solution and from the pictorial representation thats offered by the SAP interface.

James Dodds, Project Manager, e-procurement, awg plc (Anglian Water)
Word got around that it was in fact a good system and it was actually easier to use than the old system and we did deliver it on time and it did what we said it would do.

Nirmal Kotecha Head of Supply Chain Management, awg plc (Anglian Water)
The feedback has been fantastic.

James Dodds, Project Manager, e-procurement, awg plc (Anglian Water)
It gathered its own momentum.

Julie Hyne, Technical Clerk, awg plc (Anglian Water)
Very quick - very easy.

James Dodds, Project Manager, e-procurement, awg plc (Anglian Water)
The user population has been very enthusiastic.

Julie Hyne, Technical Clerk, awg plc (Anglian Water)
You know, you can see straight away what youre looking at. No more fumbling through catalogues. I love Enterprise Buyer. Its so simple to use. It has a very good search engine on it, so for instance if Im looking to buy chemicals, I can type in sulphates and its given me 41 items with sulphates somewhere in the text. Search for the ones that I want. If Im not sure I can select them and go to compare and that will display them side by side so I can make my choice, deselect the one I dont want and add to the cart. Now here Ive got my opportunity to change the quantity. Now Im ready to order.

James Dodds, Project Manager, e-procurement, awg plc (Anglian Water)
Theres nothing ruled in or nothing ruled out. Weve gone for strategically important to commodities such as chemicals that are key to us in the water and sewage industry, down to stationary products. We havent actually eliminated any of the other two ways of purchasing, which would be your standard SAP R/3 purchase order or use of a procurement card. What weve done is introduced a third way of purchasing.

Peter Oliver, Programme Director, e-business, awg plc (Anglian Water)
Using e-Procurement, which is known as the third way internally here, they are able to save significant amounts of time.

James Dodds, Project Manager, e-procurement, awg plc (Anglian Water)
The main benefits for Anglian Water are there is something there around the brand awareness and being seen as a leading mover and shaker in the marketplace and actually procuring over the Internet. For the users, theres a great deal of advantages in terms of the ease of use, gaining easy access and actually enjoying what were doing. Theres a number of savings to be made, in that it actually costs less to raise than a purchase order. If I were to give advice, it would be dont listen to all the hype, make sure youve got a well-structured project. The good standard project things around having sufficient time, resources, finance, etc. To have a realistic focus on what the benefits are. By all means come and visit us and then well give you an idea of realism of whats involved. Have a very good product to work with, and in our case that was SAP, and also have a very good implementation partner.

Nirmal Kotecha Head of Supply Chain Management, awg plc (Anglian Water)
First and foremost, make sure you understand your e-Strategy. Make sure you understand your procurement strategy within that. Understand what it is you want out of it. Dont leave it too late. Theres a lot of momentum already gathering. There has been some bad press, but its here to stay. Dont leave it too long. Get on with it!

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