Leading housing association, Platform Housing, has adopted Probrand Marketplace to streamline its procurement of IT products, managed IT services and cloud solutions.
The Midlands-based housing association, which owns and manages over 47,000 homes, has adopted the platform as part of a move to digitalise procurement processes, saving time and money compared with traditional ways of working.
Probrand Marketplace connects IT buyers with distributors and vendors of IT products, services and cloud solutions. With live price and stock functionality, Probrand Marketplace means the housing association can browse more than 300,000 IT products and compare prices in a live, transparent environment, with technical experts on hand to support buying decisions when needed. Probrand Marketplace saves the average user one hour per order and up to 20% on their IT budgets overall.
Ian Nethercot, MCIPS, supply chain director, Probrand, said: “At a time of rising business costs, organisations are looking for smart ways to improve efficiency and reduce spending. Platform Housing is another forward-thinking business that joins a growing community using our disruptive technology to connect with the IT trade to get the products and services they need at the right price, in the shortest possible time, in one place.”
Nathan Barson, platforms director of procurement at Platform Housing, said: “Traditional IT purchasing can be a painful and time consuming task, checking prices online and offline, running manual price comparisons across suppliers, searching for stock and the best price, only to find the best fit is then out of stock by the time you’ve ordered.
“Probrand Marketplace gives us real-time price comparison and stock data across trade suppliers, plus public sector specific discounts and even larger discounts when we buy in quantity. We have absolute confidence and trust we’re getting best value on every purchase.”
According to a recent digitalisation study by Probrand, which was carried out in partnership with CIPS, less than one in five (18%) procurement professionals have ‘fully digitalised’ and still rely on manual processes. A further three quarters (74%) who said they want to digitalise their processes are yet to achieve this goal and almost three quarters also said they spend a significant amount of time emailing (71%) and calling suppliers (70%).