Summary
Oxygen Finance is a world-leading early payment solution provider and the leading provider to the UK public sector.
Oxygen works with local authorities to put them in a position where they can pay a significant proportion of suppliers’ invoices on or around day 10 after invoice date. They do this through a combination of education, training, tactical deployment of facilitating technology (like electronic invoicing, which they can implement and operate without charge) and propagation of best practice. On the council’s behalf, Oxygen then engages with suppliers to agree an early payment rebate, relating to the amount of acceleration achieved on each invoice: this creates an income stream for the council from its existing spend and injects liquidity into the supply chain.
Oxygen’s early payment platform securely automates and manages the entire rebate process and facilitates automated financial reconciliation, all as a complement to the council’s ERP functionality, while providing spend insight, purchase-to-pay (P2P) transparency and rich performance analytics.
Key to Oxygen’s involvement is the scale that its programmes reach, with thousands of suppliers now choosing to participate and hundreds of millions of pounds’ worth of council spend being accelerated to suppliers.
Benefits
The London Boroughs of Bexley and Croydon are already live and realising the benefits of Oxygen early payment programmes, including:
Oldham Case Study
We started working with our first client Oldham Council in 2012 to deliver an Early Payment Scheme and they have recently extended their contract for another 4-years under a Framework Agreement. Their scheme has gone from strength to strength over the past few years and is currently generating rebate earnings in excess of £500k per annum, and £50m of contracted spend is onboarded into the programme to date.
One of the key factors to the scheme’s success has been the clear and compelling articulation to Oldham Council’s supply chain of the value of participating in the programme using a suite of tried and tested marketing tools. Explaining to Oldham’s suppliers the work that the Council is doing to improve payment processes and work in partnership with their supply base not only fosters programme uptake, but also encourages suppliers to help drive best practice (e.g. e-invoicing) and compliance (e.g. no PO/ no pay) themselves. This makes the programme a real win-win for the Council and its suppliers.
Oldham Council and Oxygen are finalists for a CIPFA Public Finance Award for the Innovative Procurement Initiative category for the Early Payment Scheme. Read Oldham Council’s Case Study for more information and visit our website www.oxygen-finance.com for other Case Studies.