The Challange

Laing O'Rourke have a vision of "adopting work processes to compete with the world's leading businesses" and a goal to process 68% of their procurement transactions electronically by the end of the 2nd Quarter 2003. As a major step towards minimising their purchasing cycle, e-procurement allows Laing O'Rourke to provide their customers with greater flexibility whilst maintaining control of their expenditure.

Laing O'Rourke already had a Coins purchasing application operating across the group. The challenge for Asite was to allow any of Laing O'Rourke's key suppliers, in this case VJ Technology, to trade with them via the Asite portal, Asite.com.

This one-time integration exercise would then allow Laing O'Rourke to connect to their other
existing preferred suppliers through the Asite portal.

The Solution

Asite has enabled Laing O'Rourke to exchange purchasing and accounting information electronically with one of their key suppliers - VJ Technology, through Asite.com.

To place an order, Laing O'Rourke can select products from VJ Technology's electronic catalogue and issue an electronic purchase order via their existing purchasing application, Coins. The catalogue is hosted on the Asite platform and holds real-time product and pricing information, which eliminates the need for Laing O'Rourke to manage its supplier catalogues.

VJ Technology can now receive purchase orders by simply logging onto the Asite portal where they can also generate and send invoices directly to Laing O'Rourke's accounting system.

Asite worked with both Laing O'Rourke and VJ Technology to identify how their existing
processes could be integrated with the Asite technical solution. To ensure a smooth roll-out
of the technology, users were fully trained by Asite to maximise the benefits of the solution.

The Benefits

As Laing O'Rourke continues to move towards strategic procurement, the use of the Asite portal will assist in making their business processes more efficient. It will provide improved procurement information within the organisation and result in better financial control and profitability.

By integrating their purchasing application with the Asite portaland e-enabling 30 of their supply chain, Laing O'Rourke can reduce invoice processing costs by up to 56% resulting in an overall anticipated saving of 25% per transaction.

The cost-savings are realised through a number of factors. Laing O'Rourke will no longer have the task of catalogue management and they will benefit from more efficient order placement and accuracy. Invoices can be easily reconciled with
purchase orders, and as they are received directly into the back-office system, this eliminates the time taken to input them.
Asite have the ability to fast track the e- enablement of Laing O'Rourke's supply chain irrespective of their existing back office systems.

VJ Technology are benefiting too. By receiving purchase orders and returning invoices electronically they are able to fulfil the requirements of their preferred supplier status with Laing O'Rourke. In addition, order queries can be reduced and payment expedited through the automatching of electronic orders and invoices.
However, VJ Technology will only maximise the benefits when they integrate their accounts system with the Asite exchange. This will enable the tranfer of data direct from the order placed into the fulfilment and accounting processes.

Company Profile

With the acquisition of Laing Construction, the Laing O'Rourke Group has become one of the most capable and complete forces in the UK construction industry.

The Group develops, designs, builds and manages infrastructure on a global basis. Its interests encompass every aspect of the construction process while it is building many of the country's biggest and most technically challenging projects.

The vision is to be the company of first choice for all stakeholders, challenging and changing the image of construction worldwide, lean and agile, by adopting work processes to compete with the world's leading businesses.

If you want to find out how your firm could benefit from Asite's business solutions, e-mail
marketing@asite.com or call 020 7647 5151.

The Laing O'Rourke Group is driven by the desire to "challenge and change the image of
construction worldwide".

As we move towards our vision of being "the company of first choice to all stakeholders",
we are developing a world-class procurement system which enables the Group to optimise the results of its relationships with its preferred
suppliers.

Steve Hollingshead
Chief Operating Officer
R. O'Rourke & Son

The major benefit of Asite is that once it's
plugged into our back office system we can get our preferred suppliers on board. Asite gives us the ability to link up with even our smaller suppliers.

John Lohan, Head of Procurement, Laing O'Rourke

Asite have enabled us to trade electronically
with Laing O'Rourke. Now that we are up and running, we are looking to more of our buyers to trade with us in the same way. By linking our new accounting system with the Asite portal, we will further be able to increase efficiencies in our order receipt and fulfilment process. We've seen the benefits that Laing O'Rourke have captured and we realised that by getting our suppliers to trade electronically with us through Asite we will save money as both supplier and buyer.

Tim Horrell, Managing Director VJT