Automation of Material / Service Code Creation

This Case Study illustrates how EBEX used its Business Process Improvement capability to bring process in line of business, smoothening internal process resulting in enhancing productivity and efficiency.

Client

Identified with 3 clients together of which one is world’s largest company from entertainment and media industry, one is Asia's largest Direct to Home provider whose innovative offerings and revolutionary features have earned it a prestigious place of being World’s third largest DTH Company and last is Asia’s largest networking and broadband services provider.

Existing Process

Every purchase (tangible or intangible) made was mapped with a specific code in SAP for inventory management. In case product description details were not available or were not matching with the existing codes in the system, a new material/service code request was manually being raised in excel format for creation in SAP.

Manual process involved filling up the details in excel template, printing a hard copy of the same with getting necessary details filled by different stakeholders from different departments, and then the document being sent to MDM team for material code creation basis on the hard copy submitted.

The Challenges

Being a manual process, the material/service code requests had to pass through a series of various departments including Commercial, Finance and MDM team. The requestor had to keep following up with each department till the code was created in SAP. The problems in the process involved:

  • No track of the paper request, hence affecting Purchase Requisition TAT.
  • Continued follow up with each department, resulting in reducing productivity
  • Chances of paper based requests getting lost between departments and tables.
The Approach

The issue was internally identified by the EBEX- PR team. The main aim was to remove the manual process and bring automation in the process to remove the challenges and also to enhance efficiency and speed of work. Meetings and discussions were held between departments and the thought was shared with representatives of Commercial, MDM and SAP teams.

After a detailed analysis of each department’s requirements, a workflow stream was created into the system. Over weeks of an intense, highly-interactive and collaborated meetings our teams reached a conclusion:

  • Re-engineering of the existing process
  • Creation of MDM workflow and respective SPOCs for each entity.
  • Creation of “on hold” option for the PR request to avoid any TAT issue

Throughout, EBEX catalyzed and facilitated the process by providing guidance and coaching on underlying process reengineering and then proposed and developed the solution.

The Solution

Eliminating manual request process (excel template) and implementation of MDM workflow process within the ERP. The requests are now raised in MDM and assigned to respective department/s, the stream flows looks like:

Requestor (PR Creator) > Commercial Team ( Grouping) > Accounts Team (GL Details) > SAP Team (Code Creation)

Involvement of all team heads made the transition smooth, and helped in overcoming the challenges. The new system has been implemented after successful testing at each department level.

The Results

Entire changed process was seamlessly executed. PR Teams completely owned the solution, and all other departments/teams are happy to be a part of it.

The automation is quite successful for internal control resulting into:

  • Improved TAT, the requests are now put into “Awaiting MDM” (outside PR queue).
  • No paper work now, resulting in increased control and efficiency.
  • More visibility, the MDM can easily be tracked at any point of time.
  • Improved productivity, as now more time available for processing.