Setup in 1976, Britannia Hotels is the UK's largest national, independent hotel group owning 35 properties with a total of 7,000 rooms. Britannia has an IT team of five, trying to manage a sizable six figure yearly IT budget.

As Britannia relies heavily on IT to do business, the IT team has to regularly purchase various infrastructure elements ranging from PCs to printers.

IT procurement has traditionally been unstructured, with each member purchasing equipment after a job has been allocated through the service desk. The process consisted of undertaking online searches, a manual process that took time and was considered unacceptable. Members of the audit team would routinely cross check pricing to ensure invoice fees were in line with market rates.

Andrew Ryan, the company's purchasing manager, explained: "Concern was raised that best value was not being qualified or achieved on every purchase. We wanted reassurance that we were paying fair prices. We're in the hotel business, not the business of IT, and we lacked expertise on what determines best price."

In order to tackle this thorny issue, spring 2010 saw Britannia Hotels introduce Mercato ITelligence - a simple online tool that advises IT buyers of trade guide price and stock levels on products. This CIPS accredited technology empowers IT buyers with market knowledge, so they can rapidly negotiate down the price of IT products with contracted suppliers.

Buyers simply input supplier product lists or spot checks online for an automated comparison with trade guide price and stock on over 150,000 'live' products from more than 2,500 manufacturers. The user discovers what margin their supplier is proposing and receives daily alerts in relation to their Product Lists, stating whether price or stock have moved.

Management functionality provides insight and validation of current purchasing ability and expenditure levels. Plus, the tool can automatically generate Request for Quotations (RFQs) in order to speed up the process of actually buying.

Mercato ITelligence enables purchasers to:

• Identify fair price and qualify agreed margins
• Monitor and track price fluctuations
• Generate automated Request for Quotations to speed-up buying
• Stay on top of market developments
• Plot key market trends to forecast price and stock

"Mercato ITelligence is saving us money and hours in time. It has reduced duplication of effort as the audit team can now see we are achieving best value on every purchase and this efficiency has released the business to focus on more strategic tasks," Ryan explains.

"We routinely use the solution everyday as part of a best practice approach to procurement that is delivering complete confidence that suppliers aren't actively ripping us off on price. It has meant a more open and transparent relationship with our supplier base and sustained best value on purchases.

"With awareness of the channel price we can trust our suppliers when they say they can't go any lower. We are negotiating from a position of knowledge based strength and validating to business managers we're getting value for money on IT.

"The team has discovered that in some instances equipment has been more expensive than it ought to be, especially on smaller items of lesser value such as cables. For example, there may be a 30 per cent mark-up on a £5 cable, but only a couple of per cent on a £400 printer. The lower value the kit, the higher the mark-up generally. This has proved to educate our buying.

"With access to a daily updated catalogue online, we can browse detailed product specifications and price rather than going to suppliers for product information. As we also see UK channel stock levels on each product, it saves us time previously wasted inviting suppliers to quote on out-of-stock items.

"ITelligence is fully auditable and records all quotes. This means we can simply check when items were purchased, which is a particularly efficient method of checking for warranty cover.

"The tool provides an intuitive interface, combined with self-help training tools, which means that it easy to learn and use."