About the Client
Bloom provides a full end-to-end marketplace solution for the procurement, contract management and payment of all consultancy and professional services.
Bloom’s procurement solution supports and assists the entire UK public sector to buy and manage professional services from a choice of regional and national suppliers.
Bloom is the UK’s exclusive operator of the NEPRO³ professional services solution, on behalf of NEPO (The North East Procurement Organisation). On average public sector buyers working with Bloom save between 11% and 19% against budget.
Challenges
Bloom wanted to enhance their technology platform to develop a solution specifically customised to the needs of the public sector, offering customers a source-to-pay solution. Bloom needed to ensure that the new technology solution was both scalable and flexible to incorporate their specific workflow and approach to procurement.
The current system had been developed in-house a number of years ago, and would need considerable investment to upgrade it to meet the business needs of the growing organisation.
The Solution
Following careful analysis, the decision was made to reach out to a third-party vendor who had the components Bloom needed to configure their unique procurement model.
Jaggaer, the world’s largest independent spend management company, was selected to develop the platform. Jaggaer had the capability to configure Bloom’s demanding criteria. Xoomworks Procurement was chosen as the integration partner for its XoomConnect solution that met Bloom’s SME positioning and pricing point. XoomConnect would be used to integrate Jaggaer seamlessly with Bloom’s existing finance system.
With four parties involved; Bloom, Jaggaer, Xoomworks and a consultant focused on the finance system, the teams worked together to optimise the sourcing solution. The process works by a customer submitting a request to Bloom’s procurement team, who then reviews it and invites relevant and approved suppliers to tender for the work. The service enables public sector customers to select professional services suppliers without any sales pressure, providing them value, control and compliance.
The platform will give Bloom the flexibility it needs to evolve and respond to the ongoing demands in the public sector. The integration took around three months to get up and running, and is now perfectly aligned with Bloom’s business model for managing professional services spend through the NEPRO³ solution.
Download the whole client story to learn more about the benefits achieved by Bloom.
