Balfour Beatty Opens the Path to Digital Transformation with P2P Solutions

The Profile

From its beginnings in 1909 Balfour Beatty has grown to become a leading international infrastructure group. Its 26,000 employees — comprising engineers, builders, project and facilities managers, analysts, consultants among others — create and care for the vital assets that enable societies and economies to grow: road and rail; airports, seaports, tunnels and bridges; health and education facilities; heat, light, power and water; places to live and places to work — the infrastructure that underpins all our lives and drives innovation.

Balfour Beatty’s main geographical focus is the United Kingdom, the United States and Hong Kong. The company has created many iconic buildings and infrastructure all over the world including the London Olympics’ Aquatic Centre, Hong Kong’s first zero carbon emission building, the National Museum of the Marine Corps in the United States and the Channel Tunnel Rail Link between the UK and continental Europe.

Evan Sutherland, Procurement Director at Balfour Beatty, says, “As an organization we really are embracing digital. In procurement, this applies to areas such as eInvoicing, eContracts and eSignatures now. With digitalization, we are making it easier to work for and with Balfour Beatty: easier for you as an employee to procure and use goods and services, easier for us to pay you as a subcontractor or as a supplier, and easier for us to invoice you as a customer.”

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The Challenge

Using a Purchasing System on a Busy Construction Site One of the many people benefiting from digitalization is Stephen Mole, Project Manager on major Balfour Beatty sites. He says, “In the past, we had to use a separate individual purchasing card system for each supplier. That meant, if you needed to order ten different items, you might need to ring ten separate suppliers. At the end of the conversation, you had to submit the PCard number over the phone. There were often problems because the number was not taken down correctly and occasionally the payment didn’t go through, so the materials did not turn up. Now, with JAGGAER, everything is on one system, you can place several orders at one time, and it always goes through.”

Sutherland describes the big picture: “JAGGAER has delivered a number of things. We have fixed catalogues and products in place with our partners, and that gives our board and managers peace of mind that employees are buying the right products, for example the right products for the job from a health and safety perspective. Secondly, JAGGAER has allowed us significantly to reduce uncontrolled spend, spend that used to go on corporate cards. Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, it has allowed us to start scoring our subcontractors in a positive manner, which means we can work with those who need improvement plans and reward those that are performing very well.” There are also benefits that are not directly procurement related. For example, colleagues in accounts payable can now pay suppliers and subcontractors who are in the catalogue system much quicker. By moving away from the PCard system, Balfour Beatty has seen a reduction in aged debts, and more efficient, automated batching of payments.

“JAGGAER now allows us to get our supply chain under control and manage our suppliers. Suppliers are essentially an extension of Balfour Beatty itself, because our customers trust us to procure goods and services on their behalf through our supply chain, in a fair and transparent manner. JAGGAER enables us to do that,” says Sutherland. From the project manager’s perspective, it’s a matter of getting jobs done. “With JAGGAER, we can order what we like, when we like, and if necessary, overnight,” says Stephen Mole.