Melanie describes the move to Xelix as “one of the smoothest projects I've worked on for quite some time.” She says Xelix promised a quick and easy transition and “they delivered.”

The only glitch was internal training, so Xelix put on extra training sessions to “mop up the gaps” that Melanie identified.

As for the issues that prompted the switch: “With Xelix, we could split our data and download it straight away. There’s also an option for further cross checks as we develop our use of the system. As for false positives, Xelix’s AI has a smarter way of eliminating them. Whilst they initially appeared, the tool’s machine learning element identified patterns and quickly reduced false positives, increasing accuracy.”

Melanie has also been impressed with the ongoing support provided by Xelix: “We have regular reviews with a team of named people at Xelix. I know I could email or phone anyone and they’d come back to us straightaway.”

ELFS works to a regular daily process with Xelix. There’s a strict 6pm cut-off for daily postings. Xelix then checks the data overnight, surfacing potential issues in the morning before any new postings. If the file transfer fails, there’s a back-up procedure in place, says Melanie.

While it’s clear having Xelix in place reduces administration time, quantifying that benefit was hard, Melanie admits. However, she confirms that Xelix identified £7 million of duplicate payments (a mix of historic payments and due payments) in the first month of operation. Since then, Xelix has prevented a further £7.3 million of duplicate payments leaving the business.

Now duplicate invoice checking is established with Xelix, Melanie has earmarked more automated processes to develop within the system.

“We have problems with duplicate vendors, perhaps because of a merger or a site name change. So, we’re going to look at the Vendors module in Xelix next. And I understand Xelix can also help us with checks on supplier bank accounts too. At the moment, we do this manually. Automating these processes will be a huge benefit to us.

"The fraud reports look really useful too, so I’ll be looking to develop this area soon. Fraud is massive in the NHS, and we’ve already got some checks in place. But there are additional features in Xelix I want to include. For example, Xelix can highlight an outlying invoice number that isn’t in the usual sequence. We’ve not been able to do that before. To me, that’s a big flag and something we can use Xelix for quite quickly.

"We’ve gone through the reporting side of the system, and we’re keen to harness this soon. Though, we already have dashboards for each client, so we’ll be looking to enhance these with data from Xelix. It will be great to demonstrate the strength of protection we’re providing by using Xelix.

"There are plenty of areas within Xelix for ELFS to grow into.”