R-Pharm implemented the solution "Expense reports" based on Directum

2018: Solution "Expense reports"

On May 11, 2018 the Akelon company announced completion of implementation of business solution Expense reports in R-Pharm group.

Owing to specifics of activity the staff of R-Pharm often goes to office trips. All traveling expenses are subject to compensation according to the current legislation of the Russian Federation. After return from a business trip workers prepare the expense report necessary for justification of a compensation amount and confirmation of purpose of the incurred expenses.

Earlier approval of reports was made in paper form and was rather labor-consuming both for the employee, and for accounting. The situation was complicated by the distributed structure of the company and a large number of reports. So, the management of R-Pharm made the decision on automation of process of management of expense reports.

As the company works more than 3 years with the DIRECTUM system, the solution should be implemented on the same platform. As the contractor the Akelon company was selected.

Having studied processes and regulations of the customer, the command started design and development of the module "Expense reports".

Within the project processes were automated:

• preparation of an account part of the expense report and set of documents;
• approval of an account part of the expense report;
• sending originals of issue and landing documents to accounting;
• creation of a complete form of the expense report;
• vising of the expense report by the top management.

Expenses of the expense report will be approved on a basis the scan images of the attached documents. Originals of substantiating vouchers go to accounting only after confirmation of expenses by the accountant. For the most expense report the Russian legislation provides approval and storage in electronic form. As replacement of the "live" signature the strengthened electronic signature (qualified or unqualified) is used.

During creation of the expense report entry is made on the basis of an account part of the report which the user enters to the ERP system of Microsoft Dynamics AH, after that the expense report is unloaded in an ECM system.

After record formation the user starts adding of documents. Preparation of each document group has the features which were put in the solution:

• the user creates reporting documents on the approved templates. The user can create at the same time at once several documents, and after creation in the initiator it will be necessary only to dozapolnit them;
• the user scans issue, landing and accompanying documents and enters into the system, grouping in packets. Further packets in a system correspond to envelopes in which there is a sending originals;
• for personal documents the user also creates a packet. When adding objects in a packet a system checks existence of personal documents accountable and presence of the rights to them at the initiator. Similar check will allow to organize uniform base of personal documents of employees and also to avoid duplication of information and unauthorized access to data.

On internal regulations of R-Pharm employees fix the fact of movement of documents in DIRECTUM. Registration of sending and receiving is performed by means of multiple scanning of barcodes. All history of the movement is displayed in cards of the corresponding objects.

The legal importance of the expense report is provided by EDS of employees: advance holder responsible for check of the accountant, deputy chief accountant, chief accountant and chief financial officer.

For upper managers well mass signing of expense reports. With the set frequency a system creates notifications to heads who have expense reports on signing. For decision-making the head can look at all documents which are attached to the expense report.

That employees quickly adapted to work in electronic form, specialists of Akelon provided training.

At the end of 2017 the R-Pharm company brought the solution "Expense reports" into trial operation. For the first two business weeks users created 83 reports. In plans of the company – replication of the solution on the child organizations and automation of paper archive of issue documents.

2015

The Akelon company completed in the spring of 2015 an implementation project ECM- systems DIRECTUM in R-Pharm Ltd company, one of the largest Russian pharmaceutical companies. Within the project were automated business processes in the head division of the company located in Moscow. The main attention in the project progress was paid to standardization and automation key business processes, to creation of the common information space within the DIRECTUM system providing routing and storage of electronic documents and also development and implementation of the solutions allowing without essential costs and completions to increase the power of a system and to connect other branches of the company. Processes of work with entering and outgoing letters, organizational and administrative, contractual and also primary accounting accounting documents were automated. Before work of users in the DIRECTUM system import of historical data was performed and also synchronization and data integration with the accounting systems is implemented 1C and Axapta.

Response about implementation of DIRECTUM in R-Pharm

"Since January, 2015 all processes on work with entering/proceeding correspondence, registration and approval of internal documents, powers of attorney and agreements and also work with primary accounting documentation is carried out in the DIRECTUM system in electronic form. As a result of system implementation of DIRECTUM time for execution of requests for providing documentation was many times reduced, control of performing discipline was facilitated, process of approval of documents and control of task performance was formalized. The achieved positive results give us confidence in prospects of our further cooperation.". The project manager of R-Pharm Ltd – Starikova S.A.

Situation

Until system implementation it was possible to select a number of key problems which employees faced in the course of work:

• for document storage the public network drive was used, documents were stored is not structured and, as a result, there were difficulties with interchangeability of employees, differentiation of access rights to information and an opportunity to trace the history of work with documents;
• there were problems in connection with frequent loss of documents, a lot of time was required on search of the document since at information storage on a network drive search in attributes of documents is impossible;
• process of approval of documents was performed by means of an e-mail that in addition complicated it and did insufficiently transparent for the management;
• in connection with geographically distributed structure of the company there were difficulties with movement of documents between branches;
• every time at making changes in this or that document, it, in fact, was copied due to the lack of version control of documents;
• business processes in the company were poorly regulated, often the time limit was not observed;
• for access to the normative reference information it was necessary to address several accounting systems and, as a result, double work was often performed, records were duplicated.

The company management was faced by a task to organize a common information space for storage and exchange of documents and also to increase the speed and employee performance due to structuring and business process optimization.

Selection

Considering the factors stated above, the company management made the decision on need of implementation of a single system of electronic document management and interaction.

At the end of 2013 employees of Akelon company the preproject express analysis during which key problems are selected was carried out and also requirements to a system are defined. Acceleration and simplification of process of approval of documents, increase in performing discipline of employees at the expense of a possibility of comprehensive control of processes in a system, increase in safety and an exception of loss of documents in the course of approval were one of key requirements of the management.

The R-Pharm Ltd company selected the DIRECTUM system among all corporate content management systems presented at the Russian market and interaction. The DIRECTUM system for several years is the recognized leader in Russia by the number of successful implementations on large enterprises. Among advantages of this system there are an orientation to needs of the client, big base of ready business solutions, scalability and flexibility, a variety of interfaces, the developed abilities to integrate with other ICs and acceptable cost. As integrator the Akelon company, the general partner of DIRECTUM company having a solid portfolio of large and successful implementations was attracted.

Task analysis

During the project specialists of Akelon company should implement the following functional requirements:

• investigate, describe and structure business processes of the company;
• provide an opportunity to have information on location of documents;
• provide the uniform structured information space and support of version control of each separate document;
• develop mechanisms of interaction between the staff of the company in the course of work on documentation with an accurate regulation of completion dates of assigned tasks;
• provide quick search of documents by means of barcoding of documents and use of technology of fast identification of RapID;
• automate business processes of work with incoming correspondence due to ensuring mass scanning of incoming correspondence;
• automate business processes on creation and approval by outgoing correspondence;
• automate business processes on creation and approval of organizational and administrative documentation;
• automate business processes on registration, a response and renewal of powers of attorney;
• automate, simplify, accelerate and regulate business processes on creation and approval of contractual documents;
• automate business processes on work with primary accounting accounting documents;
• provide use of the unified register of partners;
• simplify process of preparation of the reporting under document flow and execution of documents for the management;
• increase internal security of work with confidential documents;
• perform import of historical data on orders and powers of attorney;
• implement synchronization of an organization structure of the company from the accounting system of 1C;
• implement integration of the DIRECTUM system and the accounting system of Axapta within work with contractual documents and maintaining the register of partners.

Platform

DIRECTUM is the electronic document management system and interaction managements aimed at increase in efficiency of all staff of the organization in different areas of their joint activity.

The DIRECTUM system corresponds to the concept of ECM (Enterprise Content Management) and supports complete lifecycle of management of documents. The organization and control of business processes on the basis of workflow, a support on the Russian standards in the field of office-work, development of business solutions, ready to application, continuous improvement of technologies and partnership with the leading developers and integrators guarantee the maximum effect of system implementation of DIRECTUM.

Work in DIRECTUM using different mobile devices allows to provide business continuity and to give to the user an opportunity of comfortable work with documents and data of a system regardless of location or the used technologies.

Solution

During the project the following business solutions were implemented and adapted for requirements of the company:

• Classical office-work;
• Management of powers of attorney;
• Contract management;
• Financial archive.
• Classical office-work

Using the module "Classical Office-work" work with the entering and outgoing correspondence and also processes of approval of organizational and administrative documents was automated.

In connection with the large volume of documents, one of the main job requirements of clerks in a system was to simplify and accelerate as much as possible process of document registration and finishing them to contractors.

The standard route allowing on the logic put in it automatically was developed for each automated process to generate tasks to contractors, to change stages of ZhTs of the approved documents, to execute different checks (for example whether the document, what way poluchenotpravlen, etc. is registered).

The entering SRC

The scenario allowing to scan automatically a packet of incoming letters, to connect them with the relevant SRCs was developed for work with incoming letters and at once to send for execution. Filling of a table part with contractors in SRC was also simplified, at the expense of a possibility of filling on divisions and in advance created lists of workers. As a result, it is enough to clerks to enter data on the document into SRC and to put incoming letters on the MFP, and a system itself will create electronic documents (the scan copy of letters), will connect with SRC and will send to work. This mechanism allows to reduce considerably time of processing and registration of incoming correspondence.

Process of approval of outgoing letters was also automated. The standard route which excluded a possibility of assignment to the letter of any number and sending documents bypassing clerks is developed for processing of outgoing letters. In the course of passing of the letter along a standard route it is approved, registered and goes to the addressee. On any step there is an opportunity to trace who delays process, and to create the report "The sheet of approval".

Report "Sheet of approval"

Similar to process of work with outgoing letters approval of organizational and administrative documentation was organized. Registration numbers and the list approving automatically form depending on to what category the order or the order belongs. Besides, the possibility of approval of non-automated employees in remote branches is provided. According to the results of approval of internal documents the sheet of approval also forms. In addition, for minimization of errors and potential abuses the base of templates of standard agreements in which the text was protected from changes was prepared. And only certain fields, such as Name of the partner, details of the partner, commercial conditions, etc. were available to editing.

Register of sending and obtaining documents

It is important that all standard routes rather flexible. For example, if the document is already created and registered, it is possible to begin work with an approval stage at once, having passed the previous steps. I.e. a system is adapted for regular processes, but at the same time and allows to process exceptions of processes.

The reference book "Register of Sending and Receiving" was developed for ensuring full control over the movement and location of all documents of the company. This register contains information on all movements of documents. Entries in the reference book can be created by users manually, at accomplishment a task within a standard route (for example, at task performance on sending the letter to the partner), according to links in SRC, a card of the power of attorney or agreement and also using the scenario "Registration of Sending/obtaining Documents".

The web report on the movement of the document in SRC

Data from the reference book are automatically transferred to the Location tab to SRC, a card of the agreement and power of attorney in the form of the web report that most simply allows to monitor and quickly the movement of the necessary document.

The sendings given from the register and receiving are used for formation of different reports. For example, the report "The register of mailings" which collects data on sending documents of any kinds by Russian Post on all company.

An opportunity to look for documents by No. of the delivery note (at sending/obtaining documents from the ex-press services) was the important requirement of clerks. Standard search Search of SRC was for this purpose adapted.

Management of powers of attorney

Within the project the solution on management of powers of attorney allowing to create, approve, withdraw, renew and to store powers of attorney in a system is developed. The solution includes a complex of the reference books, standard routes and scenarios providing automation of process of work with powers of attorney.

The master of actions is developed for fast and convenient formation of the request for execution of the power of attorney. As a result of its work the electronic document (request) forms, according to the data entered in a window of the master of actions and the task goes to a design along a standard route. The card of entry in the reference book "Powers of attorney" is created automatically and at once is filled with data from the request. The power of attorney (electronic document) forms by data from a reference book card by clicking the button. To each type of the power of attorney in a system there corresponds the template. Thus, initial data are entered by proxy by the initiator, and the clerk has enough to create clicking one button the document and to check correctness of its formation. All this provides reduction of speed of creation of powers of attorney.

Card of the power of attorney

"Execution of powers of attorney" is provided approval of standard and non-standard powers of attorney (standard powers of attorney can be approved along the reduced route), delegation of works for the staff of legal department in a route, approval of non-automated employees in branches and also automatic change of the statuses and stages of ZhTs of powers of attorney.

As at the beginning of each calendar year employees of office-work face the large volume of works on renewal of powers of attorney, the base of standard powers of attorney was prepared and also the mechanism for bulk copy of standard powers of attorney is provided. In 2 weeks prior to the termination of year the scenario which defines the powers of attorney which are subject to renewal is started sends them to the clerk for check, further in large quantities copies electronic documents and records of the reference book "Powers of attorney", but already new dates. After approach of new year current registration numbers in large quantities are assigned to all renewed powers of attorney.

For simplification of control over expired powers of attorney the scenario which checks their relevance is provided and at once changes the status on "Validity period expired". And pivot tables according to powers of attorney allow to do data sampling of the register in different cuts. Besides, in the course of automation of work with powers of attorney, the reference book for convenient maintaining the vacation schedule of staff of the company was created.

Work with powers of attorney is crossed with process of work with agreements. For a linking of two modules the Agreements tab is provided in a card of record of the register of powers of attorney. The data specified on a tab are used at instructions of the signer under the agreement, depending on the amount of the agreement and the status of the power of attorney.

Contract management

During an interview with the working group a number of problems which permission was defined as a main objective of implementing solution was revealed. The lack of the register of contractual documents in which all agreements would be consolidated became one of these problems.

Agreement card. Agreement tab

By means of the reference book Agreements the unified register containing all contractual documents of the company is organized (including the agreements created in branches). The card of the reference book is completely processed.

For an opportunity and convenience of starting multi-lateral agreements, the list of partners and the list of consignees are taken out on separate tabs in table parts.

The developed web report Family of agreements allows to get quick access to information on the amounts of all contractual documents entering into family and to define their current status.

The lack of clear idea of the one who and what agreements should approve became the next problem sounded when interviewing. The developed solution automates processes on preparation of the draft of the contractual document by legal department, also defines an order of approval and the obligatory approving contractual documents.

For a possibility of independent creation of the draft of the contractual document more than 30 templates of standard agreements and supplementary agreements which availability is defined by the specified agreement category are added to a system. For those cases when it is necessary to send a task for preparation of the draft document to legal department, the standard route "Preparation of the document" started by the Create the Request button in an agreement card is developed.

Web report Family of agreements

Process of approval of agreements in the company was optimized and standardized that allowed to develop a uniform algorithm of approval for all agreements of the company. On the basis of the made rules and dependences the standard route "Approval of contractual documents" started by the Approve button in an agreement card was developed.

The list of the persons approving contractual the document is defined proceeding from the agreement category set in a reference book card Agreements. Additional cuts for determination approving are the amount of the agreement and the region on which it consists. Also the agreement category can obviously set compliance between the initiator creating a card of the agreement and the curator.

In case of approval of the non-standard agreement, the initiator and the curator can add additional approving. For main approving a route provides a possibility of delegation of approval of the agreement by the subordinate. Standard agreements which were created on the basis of the templates entered into the system, will be approved according to the simplified diagram thanks to what time of approval of similar documents was reduced almost twice.

The mechanism which is compulsorily creating the new version for each subsequent circle of approval and blocking this version when the circle is complete is developed for history logging of change of the agreement on circles of approval and accumulation of all notes which are taken out on one circle in the uniform version.

The flexibility of setup of the developed solution simplifies further development of the solution and connection of the new document types started on approval. For a task of parameters specially developed function setting installations by each company is used.

Settings of the module "Contract management"

Frequent loss of documents at a stage of transfer of originals of agreements from divisions in head office became one more sounded problem. The scenario which collects information on according to the register whether the original document received contractual department is developed for permission of this problem and if paper did not reach, sends a task for determination of location of the paper agreement revision to the contractor. Use of this mechanism together with maintaining the register of sending receiving documents, in more detail described in the solution "Classical Office-work", allows to have an information access about a current status of the paper agreement at any moment.

That in the register of agreements current status of the agreement was always reflected, the scenario sending to contractors of the notification for check of obligation fulfillment under the agreement and its subsequent closing in the general list is developed.

Financial archive

The R-Pharm company in the round-the-clock continuous mode performs supply of medicines to clients. Every day in the center of the processing ensuring functioning of a warehouse about 5000 primary documents which are accompanying process of delivery, subject to signing and return from partners are printed. Before implementation of business solution Financial archive returnable primary documents were processed as follows:

Staff of administrative service received documents, checked completeness, existence of printings and signatures of partners then fixed obtaining each document in the register which was maintained in the form of the table MS Excel.

Each received document was scanned separately. After scanning employees manually appropriated to the file the name and placed it in the folder on a network drive.

Each scan image manually contacted a delivery card in the accounting system.

The delay from the moment of receipt of the document and until entering into the accounting system made the scan image approximately from two to three months. In such conditions it was difficult to monitor receipts of documents and it was impracticable to obtain up-to-date and comprehensive information according to documents which did not arrive from partners and which are required to be requested.

Implementation of business solution Financial archive had to ask considerably processing of returnable primary documentation for the account:

• Trackings of a route of the movement of the document using reading of a barcode using the portable scanner at each stage of movement of the document.
• Use of line scanning of the documents which came back from partners with automatic separation of a flow of documents on a stroke to codes.
• The automatic placement of the scanned documents to storage of the DIRECTUM system.
• Automatic installation of communication of the document in the DIRECTUM system with the corresponding record in the accounting system.

For formation of primary documents in R-Pharm several accounting systems are used. So, for example, the sets of documents accompanying shipments of medicines and medical products form in the accounting system, and the documents connected with business activities – in 1C. Besides, on factory platforms solutions on the SAP platform, and after the beginning of implementation of DIRECTUM are used, the implementation project of MS Dynamics AX which should replace the current accounting system completely over time started.

For minimization of modifications on the party of the accounting systems and also for ensuring uniformity of integration mechanisms and increase in fault tolerance of the solution in general, the following algorithm of data exchange was implemented:

• Data on all printed primary documents in real time were unloaded from the considered systems in the special SQL table.
• The SQL table was processed by the scenario DIRECTUM and on the basis of every line the document with the filled card and an empty body was created.
• If for one reason or another, the accounting system did not manage to unload information in the SQL table, data were unloaded in the local table, and then periodically synchronized.

Thus, on the party of DIRECTUM information on the printed document appeared almost instantly, it was necessary only to wait for return of this document from the partner and to replace an empty body the scan image.

The separate card which was autocompleted when processing the table for synchronization was developed for primary documents on the party of DIRECTUM.

Card of primary accounting document After return of the signed primary document from the partner, its processing is carried out on the following algorithm:

• Using the special scenario DIRECTUM and the portable scanner of barcodes the fact of receipt of the document is fixed.
• The arrived documents are scanned on the line scanner.
• The service of recognition DIRECTUM separates a flow of the scanned sheets into separate documents on barcodes.
• The service of the DIRECTUM conversion converts the scanned documents into the PDF format.
• The scan images are brought in DIRECTUM storage replacing with themselves the empty bodies created as a result of synchronization of data with the accounting system.
• Connection between record in the accounting system and documents in DIRECTUM storage is automatically established.

As a result of implementation of business solution explicit, quickly otsenimy commercial effect was reached:

• Average time decreased by processing of one document by 2.5-3 times that allowed to increase the processing speed of documents significantly.
• Considerably error probability when scanning documents decreased.
• Due to fixation of stages of the movement of documents and introduction of control points, the probability of loss of documents decreased and also the evident instrument of tracking of location of each specific document appeared.

In the conclusion it should be noted that at the first stages of implementation of business solution the customer had concerns concerning quality of recognition of documents on barcodes, however during test operation the flow from 2500 documents was processed and only 3 documents did not manage to be identified on a barcode.

Results

On implementation project deliverables the R-Pharm company received the solution capable to satisfy to the current and perspective demands of the organization. Users had an opportunity to reduce time for search of relevant documentation at the expense of system implementation which provides itself a common information space for the centralized access to documentation. The company management can estimate at what stage at any moment there is a process of approval of documents, to control task performance by the subordinates and with ease to plan their optimal loading.

Staff of Akelon company carried out the analysis of the existing business processes and the option on their optimization taking into account the revealed features of work of this enterprise is offered. Special attention is paid to process optimization of approval of documents that in an effect allowed to accelerate and make process more transparent and controlled.

At the moment in a system 1300 users are registered, 2821 documents are created and 2084 tasks are sent. As the imported historical data in a system more than 1000 documents and records of the reference book are brought, the organization structure is completely synchronized and the uniform base from 6673 partners is created.

From 1/29/2015 process of work with the entering and outgoing correspondence, registration and approval of internal documents, powers of attorney and agreements and also work with primary accounting documentation is carried out in the DIRECTUM system in electronic form. Positive dynamics on use of a system is observed from the moment of its transfer to trial operation.

Prospects

The company management of R-Pharm is interested in further development of a system. Now also negotiations on a number of perspective wishes on accumulation of functionality which were not included into the original project are conducted, but are necessary for increase in efficiency of users in a system. In an effect connection to the system of remote branches for full automation of end-to-end business processes is planned.

Besides, closer integration by other information systems used by the company in remote branches is in the long term possible.