Scottish council takes on Consilium solution

Belfast-based Consilium Technologies, a leading supplier of IT solutions for local government, has developed an innovative eTrading solution in partnership with Carmarthenshire County Council in Wales and its key suppliers.

The solution – which is expected to result in significant savings - could "fundamentally change the way councils across the UK run building maintenance contracts," according to the company.

The solution has enabled the council to close its central stores and instead source materials and supplies from the nationwide Travis Perkins chain under a five-year contract. There are also plans to roll out the system to smaller local suppliers at a later stage.

The pilot project links up Carmarthenshire County Council and Travis Perkins with an electronic ordering, invoicing and stock control solution using the Consilium Technologies’ TASK software platform. Council tradesmen use hand-held iPAQ computers to communicate with the system which can also be accessed by suppliers via a simple eMail interface.

The pilot has already resulted in a number of significant benefits including reduced waiting times for repairs, elimination of paperwork, reduced waste and over-ordering, better cost control and, perhaps most importantly, improved quality of service.

Covering over 1,000 square miles of rolling countryside, the Carmarthenshire Operations team are called on to complete more than 35,000 jobs each year to maintain the council’s housing stock and public buildings. The Consilium solution allows the tradesmen to remotely dispatch an order and request collection from the nearest Travis Perkins store.

Future phases of the project will support electronic invoicing and automatic updating of the TASK Financials system running in the Operations Department.

By summer 2003 Carmarthenshire County Council aims to have 80% of its 140 tradesmen on the Consilium system and using iPAQ hand-held computers to conduct their transactions on-line with the various contractors in the scheme.

Consilium Technologies employs 65 people and has over 60 local authority customers.

(GMcG)