Case Study: Newcastle University achieves £1.2 million in year-one savings with WNS

Driving Enhanced Value from Newcastle University’s Investment in SAP-based Technologies and Reducing its Cost of Source-to-Pay Functions

Newcastle University, a public research university in England, was struggling with highly decentralized source-to-pay processes that varied across departments, driving up purchasing and invoice-processing costs. The university lacked a core procurement process and centralized negotiations, which limited economies of scale and made it harder to manage suppliers consistently; Newcastle University worked with WNS and SAP-based technologies to address these issues.

WNS implemented a solution using SAP Supplier Relationship Management, product catalogues, scanning and OCR, along with WNS BizAps Accounts Payable Workbench, BizAps P-Card, and BizAps Vendor Portal. The result was more than £1.2 million in first-year procurement savings, including £260,000 from P-card reconciliation, with an estimated £2.4 million in annual future savings; purchase order compliance reached 93%, contract compliance improved to 72%, and text orders fell by 30%.

Newcastle University