The Problem
Nuevatel SA, is one of the leading companies in the telecommunications sector in Bolivia, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic with more than one million mobile customers in the Bolivian market alone. With operations throughout the country Nuevatel SA with its brand VIVA is one of the leading providers of cellular and long distance telephony. To improve its service quality in recent years the company invested heavily in its information management infrastructure including having performed a successful implementation of SAP Business One. With its information and data better managed thanks to a modern ERP system, the focus in Nuevatel shifted to improving other business processes in its operations. For its process automation system, Nuevatel wanted a tool that was 100% web based and selected ProcessMaker. Nuevatel identified the procurement process as one that had a high level of visibility within the company and would be an ideal starting point for a BPM implementation in ProcessMaker. Virtually all departments in the company were touched by this processes due to day to day contracting needs and management realized that needed a better way to update users on the status of purchases and also insure that all users followed a standard procedure when making purchases for their departments.
- Like many procurement processes, Nuevatel’s process was centralized, meaning that employees of both central and regional offices had to contact procurement officers at headquarters in order to file purchase requests. This was usually done by phone or email. These employees would usually have to call multiple times in order to check on the progress of the application. As a consequence of this the officers spent too much time responding to and verifying the status of these purchase requests.
- The application forms often had to physically travel from one place to another for approval.
- Purchasing agents received applications without any type of standard format which caused the agents to have to make numerous calls to their internal clients to clarify aspects of the requests.
- Depending on the types of purchase and the related amounts each case had different levels of approvals before being accepted. Some could be made immediately, while others might require a sign off from top management or the company’s legal department.
- Each of these steps resulted in a potential point of delay, as employees often had no direct access to officials responsible for approving or continuing the process.
There was also no statistical or factual information about processes so there was also no corresponding information regarding where bottlenecks existed.
The Solution
NUEVATEL S.A. implemented ProcessMaker for the automation of the procurement process. The implementation was achieved and had the following characteristics:
- Users in all departaments now have access to the system.
- The application forms are standardized and allow applicants to define the goods and services purchased under the parameters defined in the company’s ERP System - SAP Business One.
- ProcessMaker uses Microsoft Active Directory (AD) to enable single user authentication.
- The process connects to SAP Business One to determine the valid parameters for goods or services and receive the status of the SAP purchase process.
- The system includes legal templates to create contracts that have been previously approved by the Legal Department.
- The process automatically determines the levels of approvals needed and issues notifications to the users responsible at each point in the process. The system also sends notifications to the originator to inform the applicant of the status of his/her request.
The Value Created
- Standardization of activities related to acquisitions.
- Shorter and more efficient procurement times.
- Complete traceability of every procurement process.
- Replacement of paper forms with electronic forms.
- Clear path to automating additional company processes.
