Bernicia Group is now using Aareon’s 360 Contractor Portal to streamline its repairs operation, enforce compliance with contracts and policies and improve cost management.
The portal supports Bernicia’s full repair and maintenance procurement cycle, including real-time order transfer, updates, variations, job completion and invoice management.
Gary Hind, director of business transformation, Bernicia, said, “The 360 Contractor Portal was part of the delivery requirements for when we originally went live with Aareon QL, in order to align with our ‘digital by default’ objective.
“We had already developed a contractor management system in-house which we needed to replace with the 360 Contractor Portal. We had a good relationship with Aareon’s development team so we worked with them to share our experience of our in-house system to help develop the best user experience for our staff and our contractors using the portal.
“Our contractors can now only submit invoices to the value of authorised SORs – this has been a huge advantage. The approval of variations is now performed in a more timely manner because all of our orders and variations are now issued via the portal, so there’s no delay or ambiguity. And because 360 Contractor Portal updates in real time, the communication process is also much better.
“We have around 40 contractors using the portal right now, and we’ve received great feedback that there is now much more transparency regarding the status of orders and that invoices are processed much faster for payment.
“The 360 Contractor Portal has already given us significant cost savings through more streamlined invoice processes, fewer queries about contractors’ invoices and time savings from contractors being only able to submit invoices on completion of the order in the portal.”
