NEWS
Almost three quarters of all English councils plan
to make IT systems more accessible in 2020
F
reedom of Information (FOI) requests
undertaken by SoftwareONE, a leading
provider of end-to-end software and cloud
technology solutions, have found almost
three quarters (72%) of all English councils
are planning to invest in making their IT
systems more accessible over the next
12 months. Almost all councils (95%)
have at least one disabled employee and
all respondents said they have assistive
technologies in place. in 2020 will address this lack of strategy,
enabling councils to empower all employees
to confidently carry out their job role.
However, assistance is mostly on case-by-
case basis, with only 38% of councils having
an official digital inclusion and accessibility
strategy for employees. Further investment A total of 60% of councils said they
experienced technology challenges when
trying to make IT systems more accessible
for employees. While the majority are
providing assistive technologies despite
these challenges – offering tools such as
screen magnifiers (92%), dictation (77%) or
speech recognition (90%) – councils may be
missing out on a simpler way of improving
digital inclusion.
Many widely deployed solutions, such as
Microsoft 365, have accessibility features
such as Soundscape or Translator already
built-in. This represents a real opportunity for
technical consolidation and cost savings for
councils, as well as improved user experience,
which is currently being overlooked due to
lack of awareness of the tools on offer.
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Coupa to deliver ultimate Business Spend
Management experience for BMW
C
oupa Software, a leader in Business
Spend Management (BSM), has
announced that it was selected to digitally
transform top German automaker BMW
Group’s business spend management.
In the coming months, Coupa will deploy
its BSM platform globally across BMW
Group to help harmonise and optimise the
automaker’s purchasing processes and
increase efficiency and effectiveness across
all products.
maximise their process efficiencies and
savings, and at the same time, leverage
the power of the community to spend
smarter,” said Rob Bernshteyn, Chairman
and CEO at Coupa. “Coupa offered BMW
Group a best-in-class, user-centric platform
that would gain maximum adoption across
the company. We are thrilled to welcome
such an iconic and admired brand to our
growing community and look forward to
helping it deliver measurable business value.”
In early testing with the automaker, the
Coupa BSM Platform demonstrated its focus
on user-centricity and its ability to optimise
spend for highly complex sourcing events
and categories. When adopted at-scale, the
platform could have the potential to impact
billions of dollars of business spend.
Coupa will deploy its offering to BMW to
increase efficiency and effectiveness
Coupa will replace a custom-built solution
with its BSM platform to deliver a simpler,
consumer-like experience that will enable
BMW Group’s finance and procurement
team to be more agile and focus time on
more strategic spend initiatives.
“Coupa has a long history of helping
companies of all sizes and industries
transform their spend management to
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