Back in March 2021, we confirmed authorisation to commence the build phase for the NHS Supply Chain CPQ project, in conjunction with our OEC partners at BPI OnDemand. In scope was the Large Diagnostic Capital Equipment (Including Mobile and Services) category tower, presently responsible for multi-million pounds worth of framework negotiations, purchasing and contracts across a wide breadth of medical equipment and services. This was to be seamlessly integrated to an already existing footprint of OEC (Oracle Engagement Cloud) to offer centralised reporting. The targeted benefits from CPQ for this project were;
- A guided sales process without the need for rekeying or duplicating data
- Seamless integration between OEC-CPQ with centralised reporting and an automated product sync
- Commercial flexibility to discount pricing based on customer specific requirements and route to purchase
- Complex financial summary calculations based on route-to-purchase
- Sensible governance to avoid bottlenecks
- Professional system-generated customer-facing output documents
- Flexibility to include or exclude document sections
- Ability to support MTA (Multi-Trust Agreements) via quote consolidation
- Automated Indicative leasing costs breakdown
- Centralised reporting to facilitate Trading+Tier tracker reports and supplier reconciliations
The delivery team that managed the full implementation life cycle using our Walpole Partnership methodology was led by our Senior Consultant Ian Jenkins with great support from Dan Cunningham (BA), Pradeep Agrawal (CPQ Solution Architect), Achal Meshram (Lead CPQ Developer), Maahi Kesharwani (CPQ developer) and Mohd Yusuf (CPQ developer).
The Build phase was completed in three logical sprints (see figure below) following a quotes traditional, chronological lifecycle. This incorporated bi-directional OEC-CPQ integration and a custom developed integration for OEC-CPQ product sync which enabled a real-time exchange of product details following product creation or modification in OEC.
During the build phase, the Walpole Partnership team conducted several review sessions with the customer team, a formal CRP (conference room playback) at the end of each sprint and managed changes via a CR backlog. Flexibility was evidenced within each sprint allowing for controlled, prioritised changes based on customer feedback and as the requirements were fine-tuned or improved.
The NHS project team did a great job in preparing for UAT. They assigned a team of subject matter experts to invest in a CPQ familiarisation period before preparing test scripts/scenarios and suitable data to facilitate these. The intuitive user experience developed in Jet UI for CPQ allowed the team to become fully conversant in the CPQ processes in little more than a week. SIT (Systems Integration Testing) was completed in parallel with UAT. A couple of weekly extensions occurred to the UAT timeframe, dictated by some late-landing adjustments and new requirements which were deemed essential for solution adoption. The Walpole Partnership team were able to be flexible to assess and accommodate changes, working transparently with the NHS Supply Chain project team to ensure sufficient details were provided on the requirements, and the impacts were well understood, and regression tested once developed.
Fully authorised closure of the UAT phase was then followed by end-user training, authored by the NHS team, with quality assurance from our team. Go-Live readiness continued, including final loads of the CPQ data tables, which handled everything from sellable parts/products to volume and value discounting per framework. After completion of the PROD Migration checklist for CPQ, and the many controlled changes made to OEC resulting from the CPQ implementation, a soft-launch was conducted during September 2021. This enabled the extremely CPQ conversant team of NHS subject matter experts to create live data in the PROD environment progressively validating the accuracy of this production data. After successfully completing the soft-launch and addressing all issues, authorisation was provided for full commercial launch of CPQ on October 1st 2021, with the solution receiving very positive feedback from the users now adopting the new CPQ solution and importantly, from the team who develop and present reports based on the solution.
Curtis Fallows, Financial Controller for NHS Supply Chain: Large Diagnostic Capital Equipment (Including Mobile and Services), stated; “The NHS Supply Chain CPQ requirements have probably been above average in terms of complexity, but the team at Walpole Partnership have always been quick to understand our needs and provide solutions to any issues that have arisen throughout the project. I was genuinely worried about going into this build with regards to the resource demands and complexity of it and was sceptical about whether or not we could actually run our billion pound business on a system built from scratch in a few months. Within a few weeks though, the expertise and clear technical ability of those involved from Walpole provided me with the reassurance that we were going to be able to deliver! I’ve worked with external developers and contractors before, and this was by far the easiest and enjoyable experience I have ever had.”
If you’re interested in finding out more about how we implement CPQ technology, please get in contact.
