Having investigated and analysed the Acquisitions Team workflows at Huddersfield, in the previous blog post we identified a number of issues that need to be addressed by Serial Solutions when developing Intota and for us to consider when evaluating the system. So here is our wish list for the acquisitions process:

1. An open shopping forum within Intota and linked to all registered suppliers
   A system, similar to the one on Google where you can enter the product you are searching for and it will return results, including prices, from all possible suppliers. A similar system is currently available via (Swetswise) for the purchase of eBooks. This catalogue provides an easy way of browsing and buying eBooks as it compares the vendors, prices and different access options. Having found the item you would like to buy it would then be possible for you to place an order on the item from within Intota, which would order the item from the supplier and create a record of the order in Intota. A further development may even allow the application of filters or a ranking system in line with the terms of the National Book Contract.
2. Intota to be integrated with the University financial system
   If Intota was fully integrated with the financial system, Agresso, while ordering the item you could at the same time commit money on Agresso by assigning the purchase to a cost centre and nominal. Ideally when the item was delivered on Intota it would also show as delivered on Agresso. This could then either pay for the item automatically by credit card or allow the automatic payment of the invoice by BACS on Agresso once the invoice comes through as it would recognise that the items had been received. As the cost centre and nominal was assigned during the order process the money would be taken from the correct budget. Such interaction would create more accurate records and give access to more detailed reporting systems, allowing improved monitoring of budget spend making it easier to plan budgets.
3. Less staff intensive ways of dealing with book reports
   Book reports could work in a similar way as social media notifications reducing the amount of staff time spent dealing with book reports. The suppliers could access and add information to one field on the order records in your system. This would allow them to find an item and add information such as NYP or order cancelled, when such an alteration was made it would create a notification to draw your attention to the change. By clicking on the notification it could take you through to the item altered allowing you to view the information and act on it if needed. Ideally it would even be possible for you to pass this notification on to other people and add comments, allowing us to alert the subject teams in the instance of a price increase and ask them if they would be willing to accept.
4. Simpler way of monitoring book spend
   Currently the monitoring of book spend requires the subject teams (who monitor the budgets) to log into Horizon and run a report to see the amount spent, the amount committed and the amount left. However, this can take time and relies on the staff being familiar with the acquisitions module. Therefore, it is suggested that a pop-up notification system could be employed, after each purchase a pop-up could appear informing the user how much of the budget has been spent and how much is left. Taking the idea of the pop-up notification system further it is suggested that such pop-ups could also notify the teams on the amount of time left that they have to spend their budget if monthly targets were used. Similarly such a system could be used to monitor the spend outside the National Book Contract which would improve our ability to ensure we did not go over the ceiling of £35,000 per annum.
5. A feature to check book orders
   At the moment the morning after an order has been placed we receive an email confirmation of the items ordered. This is currently checked manually against a hand-written list of orders to ensure that the two totals of the number of items ordered tally. Although a small task it is crucial and still absorbs staff time therefore it is suggested that a feature could be introduced for a notification or pop-up to appear after the order has been sent to confirm the number of items ordered.
6. Integration with MyReading
   MyReading is reading list software that has been developed in-house at Huddersfield. As an integral part of the student experience and part of the acquisitions process integration between Intota and MyReading needs to be considered. To reduce the number of reports being run to identify new items that have been added it is hoped that Intota may be able to introduce a notification system which would alert staff when an academic had added new items to a reading list that needed to be linked. It is also hoped that Intota, through integration with MyReading, would be able to identify module codes on new books and automatically add them to the correct list.