PDMS website saves UK NHS £10 million a year – August 2004

Castletown-based PDMS has developed a website for the UK National Health Service which is expected to save the organisation at least £10 million a year.

The NHS operates a fleet of around 36,000 lease cars for its employees, of which around 33,000 are procured through a NHS Purchasing and Supply Agency (NHS PASA) national car lease contract. These vehicles are currently supplied by nine lease car companies, each offering preferential rates for NHS employees. These rates are updated monthly in line with changes in available vehicles and lease costs, the supplier striving to provide the most competitive prices in order to maximise their business through their contract with the NHS. The NHS, and therefore the taxpayers, benefits by achieving the lowest possible costs for the lease fleet.

PDMS has developed a website for the car leasing contract which enables NHS employees to search for cars and see a direct comparison between all nine suppliers on a single result page. It is thought that 95 per cent of NHS contract cars are obtained using the website as the pricing tool. Previously, users would have to visit the websites of each of the suppliers to find the best price, but often just stuck with a preferred supplier and missed the cheapest deals. Alternatively, some NHS Trusts would phone all the leasing companies to obtain the best quote.

The site is driven by two sources of data: car specification data provided by CAP Motor Research, and ‘rate books’ from the lease car suppliers. It is essential that this data is up to date to ensure NHS employees have access to the latest vehicles and the most recent lease rates. This requirement is met by provision of data upload facilities which handle large amounts of data. These data files are queued for import by site administrators and the actual process runs overnight to avoid disruption to users of the site.

Janet Bevan of NHS PASA, said:

The financial saving is thought to be around £10 million a year. The intangible savings are in time and efficiency for both the (health) trusts and the suppliers. For example, lease ‘rate books’ were first issued in hard copy, then on CD-Rom. The cost of producing these items alone was huge as it had to be done each month. Savings for the trusts has meant that less time is spent searching for quotes and quote variations.

The site is secured by requiring a login, which prevents the lease car suppliers from viewing other companies’ rates. This ensures competitive pricing and allows NHS Purchasing administrative staff to collate statistics on site usage.

For a large organisation such as the NHS, and nine independent car lease suppliers to ‘buy into’ such a system there has to be a significant business advantage to be gained. The vast financial saving coupled with the accessibility of the website on the internet has made this site a great success.

If I were to sum up the positives of the website, I would say that the NHS trusts obtain contract information and car leasing rates quickly, efficiently, accurately, and in real time,

said Ms Bevan.