Optimized SAP for UK Airport Improved Efficiency and Service Levels

Challenges.

The client implemented SAP a few years ago and handed over the support to Coforge. Sometime later when some gaps and needs for enhancement became visible. The problems faced by the team were:

• Employee departure resulted in issues in handling open Shopping Carts, Purchase Orders.
• The colleagues did not have access to one another’s purchase orders, resulting in delays in closing the purchase cycles.
• The Shopping Cart Approval Process for capital expenditure (CAPEX) items was manual, tedious, spread across different systems, and was facing questions by the audit committee.
• The existing process of creating a purchase order (PO) from a shopping cart was manual and required more time and resources.

Solution.

Our rich SAP talent pool coupled with vast vertical expertise enabled us to quickly understand the issues faced by the client and deliver an effective solution that resolved the business challenges. By providing more control to the users, we made the process simpler, faster, and more effcient.

With its extensive expertise across multiple SAP modules, Coforge worked in the following areas for the client –

• Financial Accounting
• Controlling
• Sales and Distribution
• Accounts Receivable
• Accounts Payable
• Asset Accounting
• Materials Management
• Project Systems
• Real Estate
• Treasury

The key features of the solution were:

Team Shopping Cart:

The issues caused by the departure of staff with open shopping carts and purchase orders coupled with employees having no access to a receipt purchase order or to edit other shopping carts were resolved by the implementation of team purchasing functionality in SAP SRM. The solution allowed SRM requesters to have greater access and control by enabling team members to take over the shopping carts of others and process them. The users were given the ability to define substitutes for themselves who were able to take over their shopping carts.

Automate Conversion of SRM approved Shopping Cart into a Purchase Order:

‘Requisition to PO process’ involved a manual step of converting an approved cart into a PO through the buyer’s worklist functionality of the SAP SRM suite. This activity was performed by a procurement resource who actioned it 3 times a day and spent around 45 minutes every session. Custom development was done to copy the preferred supplier into supplier field as default when the shopping cart was saved. As a source of supply got assigned to shopping carts, the automatic creation of purchase orders was triggered once they were fully approved.

Delegated Financial Authority (DFA) Approval Process:

The existing process adopted by the business used various vehicles (paper, wet signatures, or share point) to capture the required DFA approvals. The approach led to issues in tracking and auditing the approval process. The solution implemented a 3-stage approval process within the SAP SRM system - Finance Business Partner approval at Stage 1, Purchasing Group/ Project approval at Stage 2, and a DFA Approval at Stage 3 based on the cart value. Only on completion of this 3-stage cycle is the purchase order created. 

The impact.

• Significant yearly savings.
• The purchasing team's process became smoother - the carts moved onto identified substitutes without any manual intervention.
• Dramatically improved service levels: 99.9% SAP Uptime.
• Reduced the team’s effort and saved up substantial hours per week.
• The number of requests received for manually converting shopping carts to purchase orders was largely reduced.
• Proactive analysis of incidents and provided a 2-year roadmap to transform the services.