Amway (Microsoft SharePoint 2007)

Situation

Because of existence of a large number of divisions in regions and need to approve contractual and payment documents with the central office, in the company there were delays of approval and carrying out payment.

Anywhere project information of the agreements which did not undergo approval since registration was made only after a statement was not accumulated. The history of approval was not stored, and did not get in any reports.

Also it was required to control payments under agreements regarding compliance to the stated amount. These transactions took considerable time of financial controllers, and there was a risk to make a mistake at calculation.

Selection

Due to the geographically-distributed structure of branches and shopping centers of Amway company when choosing the platform the demand that a system should have the convenient web interface was made and it is easy to be scaled for the subsequent development and replication of the solution.

As the corporate center of Amway company is in the USA, when choosing preference was given to the foreign systems.

After comparison of a number of systems the Microsoft SharePoint 2007 platform as the most modern and the Amway companies meeting all requirements was selected. The decision was made taking into account perspective of consolidation of the developed system with the similar systems on SharePoint 2007 which are already implemented at other offices of the company in Western Europe and America.

Selection

Leading employees of financial department and accounting of Amway company defined a number of paramount tasks which were going to be solved using the SharePoint platform.

At a stage of implementation of a task were analyzed and specified. Among them:

• creation of the general register of agreements;
• creation of the general account register;
• creation of the general register of purchasing requests;
• integration with the financial accounting system 1C 8.1;
• data migration from the existing register of agreements in a new system;
• automation of process of initiation, approval and the adoption of the agreement with the subsequent automatic registration in 1C;
• automation of process of approval and the approval of requests for payment with transfer in the client bank and fixing of the fact of payment in 1C 8.1;
• implementation of financial control of compliance of the amounts of agreements to the corresponding budgets;
• accounting of volume of planned and actual payments under each agreement.

Platform

Microsoft SharePoint 2007 is a platform which gives the chance to increase labor productivity due to use of the integrated set of flexible functions, provides support of joint work in the most all-inclusive sense of this word and helps colleagues, partners and clients to organize interaction new, more efficiently.

Regardless of how SharePoint 2007 — from the personal computer, the browser or the mobile device is used — work is conducted in well familiar and intuitive working environment helping to increase efficiency in scales of all organization.

SharePoint 2007 provides uniform scalable infrastructure and flexible options of deployment.

Solution

For effective solution of all assigned tasks of functionality of the standard visual editor there was not enough SharePoint Designer 2007 as considerable customization was required, in particular — improvement of ergonomics of the solution, difficult routing of tasks and existence of obligatory checks at information input. At a development stage and adaptation by specialists of Akelon company in a system workflows for work with agreements and with requests for payment were configured, registers of agreements, requests for payment and purchasing requests were added.

Registers of agreements

Existence of a large number of the checks which are not allowing to enter wrong data on the document became distinctive feature of cards of registers. All records of registers are numbered automatically according to the set rules.

• the attached documents;
• CER (requests for a capital expenditure);
• purchasing requests;
• connected agreements.

In a system there is a possibility of viewing all family of agreements — for example if it is necessary to browse all annexes to the selected agreement or to find the leading agreement. Work is conducted at the same time in five different currencies, and the amounts are automatically recalculated according to the set rate. Also to any document it is possible to print the sheet of approval and to look at the history of correspondence on it.

The choice of records for "reference book" details is implemented. The configured representations allow to work with list representation conveniently.

In a system there is a possibility of viewing all family of agreements — for example if it is necessary to browse all annexes to the selected agreement or to find the leading agreement. Work is conducted at the same time in five different currencies, and the amounts are automatically recalculated according to the set rate. Also to any document it is possible to print the sheet of approval and to look at the history of correspondence on it.

Workflow

Workflows flexibly change depending on initial data about the approved document, existence additional approving, the amount specified in the document, etc. In the course of work with requests for payment after approval and the approval of the request it is given to 1C, the payment order forms and data are transferred to a system the client bank. After money transfer in a system the mark about the payment fact in 1C 8.1 becomes and from the corresponding budget of the purchasing request the specified amount is written off.

Are implemented three key business process:

• Approval of agreements;
• Approvals of requests for payment;
• Registration of requests for purchase/CER.

It is created the task form on processes is individual. With its help it is possible to study the test and terms of a task, to pass to the approved documents, to add the comments, to browse the history of correspondence within approval process. At task performance there is a possibility of the choice of parameters and results of accomplishment which define the further course of process.

Information on any task is duplicated on the e-mail postal address of the employee. The employee receives a reminder at delay of any task.

Also separation of access rights to documents and records of registers for ensuring confidentiality of information was configured.

The report which allows to browse the history of correspondence within process of approval of the agreement and results of task performance on approval by other employees is implemented and also to compare the actual and planned dates of task performance. The report "The sheet of approval" is also implemented.

Workers and substitution

The functionality allowing to configure substitution for the employees who are going on leave, on the sick-list or absent for other reasons was developed for ensuring continuity of management processes in a system and also the calendars of working time considering territorial arrangement of the employee for automatic calculation of terms of accomplishment of tasks were added.

Integration with 1C Integration with 1C 8.1 for increase in transparency of management (including automatic synchronization of information on partners between 1C and SharePoint is implemented) was performed and data migration is executed of the register of agreements for the last few years with comparison and linking when converting with agreements in 1C (about 10,000 records). The organization of a common information space allowed to exclude duplication of information and to reduce labor input operation on maintaining the general reference books.

Result Detailed instructions on work with the solution were developed for the staff of Amway.

They are workflows, reminders, completely processed interface, etc. — is aimed first of all at increase in efficiency and speed of work of employees, so — at increase in company competitiveness.

Results

A system was brought into trial operation at the beginning of March, 2011. At the same time in systems about 120 users were involved. After two weeks of trial operation in a system about 250 users from whom about a half — the staff of branches in regions work.

In two weeks in a system more than 200 agreements and 400 purchasing requests were created and approved and over 350 requests for payment are carried out. In general considerable reduction of time for approval and increase in speed of carrying out payments is noted.

Impressions

Vera Krylova, chief financial officer of Amway: "Specialists of Akelon company together with our working group proposed a number of interesting solutions and completely executed development and adaptation. The solution on the SharePoint 2007 platform was closely integrated with the financial accounting system 1C 8.1. Also data on the agreements created for the last few years that gave the chance directly to begin to use analytical opportunities of the solution were loaded into a system, without waiting for information storage under newly created agreements. Separately it would be desirable to note high quality of the accompanying documentation to the developed solution. Now all work with agreements and financial control of payments on them is exercised in a system, and we already see the first results. In the nearest future we are going to use the developed solution as basic for the organization of a full-fledged electronic document management system and internal interaction between employees".