Case Study: Purchase Order Management System
Customer: Prime Drinks
Challenge
Prime Drinks purchased over $5 million of products and services every year such as IT outsourced services, office supplies, marketing materials, etc. There was a paper based system of requesting and approving purchase orders which was totally out of control. There was no easy way to request, approve, track and monitor completion of purchase orders.
Solution
We built a custom Purchase Order Management System. Users input into a form in the system that matched the paper-based form they were using previously (so no training required). They put in details such as service/product requested, supplier details, total amounts, etc. Depending on the built-in rules about the level and type of purchase, the request was sent to the appropriate person for approval. Once approved the request was routed to the SAP system and the purchase order was sent from SAP to the supplier automatically.
Later when an invoice is received for the service/product, it is scanned by the accounting department, input into the system with the matching P.O. number and a task is sent to the employee who originally requested the product/service to verify that the final invoice is correct and that the product/service was received. When this is done, the P.O is marked as complete.
Summary
This solution was implemented in approximately four weeks and resulted in a much cleaner process with fewer mistakes, higher accountability and much more automation resulting in saved time.