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| About the Client |
The client is a global provider of professional technical and management support services to a broad range of markets, including transportation, facilities, environmental and energy. With 50,000 employees around the world, the company is a leader in all of the key markets that it serves, providing a blend of global reach, local knowledge, innovation, and technical excellence in delivering solutions that enhance and sustain the world's built, natural, and social environment. The company serves clients in more than 100 countries and had revenue of $5.2 billion during its fiscal year 2008. |
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| The Business Challenge |
In an organization this large, with 50,000 employees across the globe and 10,000 requisitions per month, purchasing materials and equipment for environmental engineering projects is a formidable task. Inefficiencies of any kind can result in significant costs in time and money. |
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| Strategic Actions |
| As a leading global service provider of comprehensive environmental remediation solutions, the company often purchases high value equipment and materials used in these solutions. These high cost items are billed to clients as projects are completed. Any delay in the acquisition, payment or invoicing processes can have a negative impact on both cash flow and profits. Given the potential negative impact on their bottom line, the organization sought to: |
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Improve and control the flow of acquisition and payment processes |
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Identify where the work is in the process at any point |
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Show, in “real time”, the potential dollar impact to their bottom line |
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| The company uses a SQL-based Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system to generate purchase requisitions, A/P vouchers and invoices. They found that the ERP system supported automated data entry for the documents involved, but that “approvers” had to log on to the system to find things to approve. With up to five approval levels, the work could be delayed because people were on vacation, traveling, etc. Also, the supporting documents are external to the ERP system, so snail mail was used to send them among approvers. Their solution was to define a business process to aggressively pursue electronic approvals, easily enable changes (since approval paths are dynamic), and move the approval processes at optimum speed. |
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| The Solution |
The company was familiar with the power and flexibility of the INDICIUM Flow software product through their experience using INDICIUM DM for enterprise document management. Their authorized INDICIUM reseller was able to demonstrate how a close integration could be achieved among INDICIUM Flow, INDICIUM DM, INDICIUM Capture, and the client’s existing Lawson ERP.
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With the use of INDICIUM Flow, the reseller prototyped an end-to-end solution infrastructure that maintained the client’s investment in existing systems. INDICIUM Flow communicates directly with the Lawson software to “image enable” various applications within the ERP system, using INDICIUM DM as the document store. To “workflow enable” the ERP system, Lawson system flags and data are used to initiate the INDICIUM Flow processes that move requisitions and invoices throughout the world for approval actions. Ultimately, INDICIUM Flow updates Lawson databases, and then stores approved invoices in INDICIUM DM. Throughout the processes, INDICIUM captures and stores business intelligence data used for real-time inquiries by the company’s management.
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“Our success with INDICIUM has not only helped us improve our processes, but has made other businesses take notice,” explained the client’s IS Director. “At industry meetings, people are interested in what we have been able to accomplish. We look forward to reaping all the benefits from the implementation as we continue to utilize and master its complete functionality.” |
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| Benefits: |
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Reduces time, paper, and people costs for processing requisitions and invoices |
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Improves efficiency with workflow task assignment |
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Leverages existing investment in ERP software |
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Provides comprehensive reporting to support revenue and expense management
in “real time” |
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