Product range
Cloud B2B Solutions
Spring 2025: Welcoming New Clients
We are excited to announce that several new clients have joined the Cloud B2B family!
Global Service Group Ltd: A national delivery service offering a large variety of specialist logistical solutions. GSGRP recently implemented a system covering the purchase order workflow process for around 20 users.
Roddy New Homes Construction Ltd: A family-run housebuilder, creating homes with sustainable materials. Roddy New Homes required a system to handle the complete purchase order process for 10 users. Shortly after implementation, they asked us to add invoice approval features to the system.
JRS Mechanical Services Limited: A building engineering client working with a wide array of end users. JRS Mechanical Services have around 10 users using the system to handle their full procurement and invoice approval process.
Kaicedo Buying & Selling of Real Estate: A real estate partner based in Dubai, Kaicedo were an existing client who required a new system to supersede their existing one. The system covers full purchase order processes with invoice approval for 7 users.
Spring 2025: People Focus
Nick Clark, Systems Developer & Support Assistant
Nick joined Cloud B2B in March 2023 and is a key member of the development and support team. Having previously worked for Autoglass, Nick has made the move into IT as a developer to satisfy his passion for IT and technology.
Nick is an integral member of our development and production team, specialising in designing and implementing systems tailored to meet each client's unique needs. In addition to developing custom solutions, Nick plays a critical role in scoping enhancements for existing client systems, ensuring that updates align with current system functionalities. With a passion for building accurate, client-focused solutions, Nick brings both technical skill and dedication to every project and thrives on staying up to date with the latest technologies and coding practices, continuously expanding his expertise to deliver tailored solutions for our customers.
Outside of work, Nick is an avid supporter of Arsenal FC, regularly going to matches and supporting them! When he is away from the excitement of a match, he can be found kayaking and enjoying other outdoor activities such as visiting areas of natural beauty for hikes. He makes a point of never visiting the same place twice to experience something new each time he goes travelling.
Spring 2025: New System Features
As we expand our customer portfolio, new key features and functions become available, based on genuine customer business needs. These can therefore become generic changes that other new and existing customers can take advantage of. Here are just some the latest enhancements. If you see relevance of any of these in your current system, contact James Cole (sales@cloudb2b.co.uk) to discuss.
New Admin Section
A more visual way of presenting the wide range of system administration tools available to client system controllers to make their use more intuitive.
Import PO Lines
This feature allows users to import PO lines from an imported template document rather than adding them manually to the PO on a line-by-line basis. This saves users time if they are creating a particularly long purchase order. It also allows the potential for them to create template documents for regular orders that can simply be imported into the system when required (e.g. from an offline Quotation or Estimate). The admin user will then set up the import template e.g. assigning the columns and setting an appropriate name for the template, for PO creators to select the pre-defined configuration template and easily import Lines to their Purchase Order.
Budget usage grid appears on PO approval task
(Applicable to those with budget control function deployed).
The budget usage grid is present to provide the approver with critical information relating to the budget(s) used on the PO. It displays the cost center, nominal code, budget name and usage values.
Tooltips Added
Where you see question mark symbols beside a function, click on the symbol to reveal hints and tips as to the functions use. Another training tool to help with system use!
Payment method filter for Purchase Orders
PO creators can select on PO creation the payment method used for a purchase. Now this can be reported on as a new option in the search filter menu providing key financial information. Especially useful for Company Credit Card tracking and reporting.
Nominal Code filter for PO Lines
For those selecting nominal codes at line level PO creation, there is now a drop down list that is admin level created and editable, to reduce user errors.
PO Escalation feature (Approve and re assign)
This is available for instances where a particular type of purchase may require further or different authorisation. If another approver is selected outside the set approval rules, they will get a new approval task. If that new approver approves a task, it will follow the standard workflow already in place, by either sending the PO on to the next level of workflow, or to the supplier (if enabled).
Note: PO's can only be escalated to users that have the "PO Escalation" permission enabled on their account and can only be escalated to users they have access to (i.e. department managers).
Spring 2025: Editor Comments
Ai – the ‘force’ that keeps on giving - or is it?
The global Ai market is expected to reach $1.81 trillion by 2030 with over 80% of companies declaring that Ai will form at least part of their strategies going forward. From manufacturing where Ai ‘assistants’ are listening for telltale signs of potential ‘fatigue’ in key machinery parts to predict failures. Then all the way to your very own Ai virtual ‘friends’ who learn how to talk to you individually, based on interaction on a personal level. The world will never be the same again.
One effect perhaps overlooked is that the use of Ai and LLP models requires substantial power consumption. By firing up and questioning these models an inordinate amount of power is used, to the extent that future systems leaning on data centre technology, may even look to the potential of small nuclear reactors (Small Modular Reactors SMRs) to become more power self-sufficient! This also could determine the global spread of Ai technology where countries are left behind due to power ‘poverty’.
And what about the much-heralded advantages of Ai and the many specific tools that have evolved in terms of improving business productivity? Some are reporting that the evolving complexity of Ai is in fact having a detrimental effect on staff productivity. This may well be due to the inevitable learning curve involved in finding the right fit for individual businesses and how to make the most of the technology in such a fast moving platform.
So, Ai may not be the panacea for all. The possible key to successful Ai implementation, is finding the right application for each organisation that works alongside employees, to enhance their abilities to provide faster, more detailed answers, or options, to problems that they face in their work. In that context having an Ai virtual ‘buddy’ is possibly not conducive to team motivation!
Spring 2025: Cloud B2B - Capable of more than you may know!
Whilst providing innovative systems in the Purchasing, HR, and Contracts Management arena, we can also provide high level solutions for one off or ongoing projects. Using our abilities in understanding what can be complex, multi-platform requirements, B2B's team have been employed to provide practical, economic solutions to a number of clients such as Bimson Haulage (subject of a case history in our last summer edition).
Graham Light (Chairman) commented:
"Whilst we may be a small company, our abilities to provide more specialised solutions, often in a tight timeframe, that help reduce cost and unnecessary complexity, has and will continue to be an attractive proposition for many clients.
We can invariably be more 'swift of foot' than many larger organisations, offering much better value without compromising quality, performance and ongoing support."
Contact Daniel Page (01480 356702) to discuss any solution requirements you may be considering to see what we can provide.
Spring 2025: Case History - Wintle Heating & Plumbing
Wintle Heating & Plumbing, established in 1966, has grown to be one of the largest combined heating, plumbing, and electrical contractors within the Anglian and East Midlands Area. As a consequence, in growing the business, the company faced challenges in managing a wide range of services and suppliers across multiple locations. Ensuring fiscal controls, standardising purchasing practices, and maintaining efficiency across various departments were becoming increasingly complex.
Tom Wintle, Commercial Manager at Wintle Heating & Plumbing, recognised the need for a more streamlined and efficient purchasing system to replace their existing processes. Their goal was to implement a solution that could provide greater control over approvals and reporting whilst keeping IT overheads low.
Upon researching potential solutions, Tom discovered Cloud B2B's cloud-based Purchase Order software. The comprehensive range of functionalities and the flexibility of the licensing model offered by Cloud B2B immediately stood out. After a series of remote demonstration sessions, Wintle Heating & Plumbing decided to implement the full Purchase Order transactional solution from Cloud B2B.
The implementation process began with a detailed specification session, followed by the development of a tailored test system. This allowed Wintle Heating & Plumbing to thoroughly evaluate the system before full deployment. Key features such as the Budgets module, which ensures correct allocation of nominal codes at the budget level, and the ability to associate delivery notes with the corresponding PO's using the Goods Receipting module, were integral to their requirements.
The system went live initially at Wintle Heating & Plumbing's head office, where it was rigorously tested to ensure it met all operational needs and gained acceptance among users. Following the successful trial at the head office, the system was rolled out with a license pool of 3 concurrent users.
To further address practical needs, additional features were added to the system, including Group Approval, Bulk Receipting lines on a Purchase Order, and the ability to receipt without a formal document. This flexibility ensured that the system could evolve with the company's requirements.
The new system has significantly enhanced visibility into financial performance across all branches. The insistence that suppliers use genuine PO numbers has improved supplier invoice management, saving time and reducing errors. The comprehensive reporting suite has facilitated more accurate forecasting of monthly profitability and better control of expenditures.
Importing supplier agreed price lists and specifications has streamlined the purchase order process by automatically creating a purchase order from an offline template, making it faster and more accurate. The structured format has benefited the procurement of everything from office supplies to essential equipment.
Tom Wintle and his team are pleased with the improved efficiency and controls the Cloud B2B system has brought to their operations. The cloud-based solution will support Wintle Heating & Plumbing's continued growth and commitment to excellence in the heating, plumbing, and electrical contracting industry.
Tom commented:
“In a fast moving business like ours, Cloud B2B's system has provided a customised solution that has improved all aspect's of the purchasing process. I can highly recommend them for their quality of work and understanding our business needs, and continued support”.
Summer 2023: Working with you to succeed!
At CloudB2B we see our clients as partners in providing the right technology solutions, tailored to their business. Our goal is to always provide systems that can evolve with each client, because all business needs to adapt to the ever-changing challenges we face.
That’s why we always have a full Specification Meeting once clients have said they wish to proceed, From that we produce a system Specification Form for sign off, before we commence a system build. This ensures that the client fully understands what functionality will be delivered at what final price. We also provide a test system, after it’s build here at Cloud B2B for the client use to check that it ‘does what it says on the tin’ before it goes live.
Plus, with each system clients get a number of hours of support time that they can use for small changes post go live, or for mare major changes to quote under Change Management, again for clarity.
That’s why we believe our clients give us ‘5 star’ reviews, as we work on a long term basis with them!
We look forward to working with you, for many years to come...
Summer 2023: Editor Comments
Will the developing power of Ai, eventually mean robots ‘on the street’ that replace humans in future job roles?
Nobody knows the answer to exactly how Ai and deep learning will affect the way we work, but perhaps in the meantime we should adopt a more reflective approach, before the ‘I Robot’ film becomes a potential reality!!
OpenAi, leader in NLP, stated originally that their business model:
“combines cutting-edge AI research with commercial applications of AI technology. The company’s business model is designed to advance the field of artificial intelligence safely and make the technology available to various businesses at affordable prices”.
However, the world’s newsfeeds and social media in general have made much recently of the potential dangers of LLM’s and it’s associated Ai technologies. Some believe that programs such as Open Ai GPT4, could in the future, as a self-learning technology, have an issue with working with humans that are slower to adapt and perform.
As the past has shown us, technologies have a way of simply increasing their speed of adaptability, but hopefully the world, led by governments, will get to grips with any potential (future) risks that the technology may present, before any ‘nightmare’ scenario comes to pass.
Sam Altman (CEO OpenAI) also forecast on the future:
“In 10 years, I think we will have chatbots that work as an expert in any domain you’d like. So you will be able to ask an expert doctor, an expert teacher, an expert lawyer whatever you need and have those systems go accomplish things for you.”
There are already over 2,000 plug in’s that have been launched using ChatBot4, covering an ever expanding range of applications , which demonstrates that Ai is here to stay.
In the meantime - One of the primary benefits of Open AI Service for businesses is its ability to help streamline operations and improve efficiency. By using the suite of advanced artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities, companies can automate repetitive tasks or routine tasks, optimise many other processes, and make future business decisions more effectively using new more comprehensive data based sets of information.
This will allow the workforce to focus on more important things and finish pending tasks in less time.
GPT4 has also improved it’s abilities to write suggestive code that will help organisations speed up the process of core code writing for systems.
Here at Documents Online we will only continue to safely embrace the relevant efficiency / predictive modules that Ai can provide, that we will deploy to make the most of the solutions that we offer our clients.
We look forward to working with you, for many years to come...
Summer 2023: People Focus
Paul Naylar, Senior Bureau Operative / QA executive
Paul has been a key member of the organisation since 2012, when he joined from the Royal Airforce, and has over time significantly increased his responsibilities.
Originally a core team member of the scanning team, Paul has taken over full responsibility for the operation not only of the whole IPC bureau scanning operation, but the management of the document storage warehouse and it’s data base, plus day to day Accounts functions.
Paul has now taken another key role to support the Cloud B2B range of systems, using his keen eye for detail and quality to provide a key pre test client system quality control function.
Paul (a keen Arsenal supporter – a Gooner no less!) is a keen cyclist and computer games player, photographer and has a keen interest in all matters football. Paul commented: ‘Attention to detail has always been a skill I’ve been able to deploy, in whatever role I have taken on at IPC. I look forward to providing extra back up resource to my Cloud B2B colleagues, and of course Arsenal winning the Premiership next season!!
Spring 2023: People Focus
Graham Light founded our sister company The IPC Group, some 25 years ago. IPC provides bureau document scanning and storage facilities for a range of clients including Marshall ADG in Cambridge. Then some 12 years ago, he felt that there was a market need for private cloud based software solutions for all kinds of business- hence the launch of Documents Online Ltd. ‘We’ve come a long way since the early days of Documents OnLine. Now trading as Cloud B2B our new and increasingly powerful UI has brought us a wide range of clients, and system enhancements. We are constantly looking at ways to improve our solutions, many of which come out of our clients specific needs. We have never delivered just a standard ‘out the box’ system, because each client has the need to match their current and changing business needs. It may not make for an easy life for our development team, but a happy and satisfied customer, is all we want! Outside work Graham enjoys the gym, walking, golf, travel and music (currently Royal Blood [&] Radio Head feature) and of course supporting his football team, West Ham…no, the picture of Graham holding the FA cup was not taken when they last appeared at Wembley, beating Arsenal 1-0 in the 1980 final – but he was there for that game (so he says!).
Spring 2023: Make 2023 a positive year
Despite the talk of recession, and rising prices across a whole range of goods and services, the UK business world still retains the drive to not only develop new sales avenues, but to control costs. The objective is to ensure that business not only survives but looks forward and retains and improves profitability. Our purchasing order solutions are providing part of the digital transformation that will help clients achieve these key objectives, now and into the future. In line with our program of functionality development we now have a Compliance Module available that will track supplier accreditations. And with a still evolving work place pattern, our HR solutions are ideal to not only manage and support staff but to take old fashioned administration out of the process of requesting and getting approval for items such as holiday, timesheets, training, and much more…(incl. GDPR compliance)
Spring 2023: In good company
The end of 2022 saw a late flurry of sales activity across a wide range of clients, and we are delighted to welcome the following customers to the Cloud B2B ‘family’, who have purchased solutions form our Purchase Order range.
We Are Digital (Providers of digital training services) Purchase Order [&] Supplier Invoice system
Totally Welsh (Food [&] beverage manufacturer / supplier) Purchase Order [&] Supplier Invoice system
Flightcase (Manufacturer of bespoke packaging solutions) Purchase Order [&] Supplier Invoice system
Wintle Heating [&] Plumbing ltd[nbsp] (Heating and plumbing engineers) Purchase Order system
Skyline (Commercial property developers) Purchase Order system
Fitzwilliam College: University of Cambridge (University) Purchase Order System
We are also involved in providing on going bespoke IT transformation projects for current and future clients. If you have a specific project that requires custom development, then we are here to help!
Autumn 2022: People Focus
Many of you will be familiar already with Dan Page, Head of Service Delivery, so we are delighted to announce that Dan has been made a Company Director and shareholder of the new IPC / DOL Group with immediate effect.
Graham Light (Chairman) commented ‘Dan has been key to the success and growth of Cloud B2B over the last 10 years and more, and we are delighted to confirm his appointment that reflects his importance to the organisation.’
Dan will continue to head up the Customer Delivery and Support function, and for any clients grateful for Dan’s efforts, please note he does enjoy a decent single malt scotch!
Autumn 2022: In good company
We are delighted to welcome a cluster of new clients to the Cloud B2B family, who have just taken delivery of a Purchase Order Solution, or their system is in the production ‘pipeline’.
Bimson Haulage Ltd (total logistics solutions) Purchase Order [&] Supplier invoice system
CSO Group (environmental engineering) Purchase Order system
Yorkshire Choice Homes (Housing Developers [&] Building projects) Purchase Order System
Bunk Campers (campervan [&] motorhome hire) Purchase Order [&] Supplier invoice system
K.Binks (Heating) Ltd (Mechanical [&] Electrical contractor) Purchase Order System