i-Sys Labs experts have implemented a flexible procurement and contract management system for 4finity

2021: Establishment of a procurement and contract management system

On May 28, 2021, i-Sys Labs announced the implementation of a flexible procurement and contract management system in the international financial company 4finance.

The customer needed to migrate and optimize existing processes with contracts, purchase requisitions, invoices, vendors, etc. from the existing system to SharePoint Online. The current customer system was not ergonomic, complex for users and did not allow to quickly respond to organizational changes in the company. In addition, it was necessary to realize the opportunity to work with the system online and conduct coordination through mail. The customer planned to get a convenient, intuitive system, with flexible customization and a transparent approval process.

Office 365 and SharePoint Online were chosen as the platform for solving the problem, as well as the ZForms and ZFlow product line for fast low-code process automation in Office 365.

One of the key aspects of automation was taking into account the complex processes of document negotiation in the company, which involve a complex system of roles, a variety of coordination routes for various legal entities, many exceptions, dependence on approval limits and other criteria. To simplify the administration of a complex role system, many processes for managing organizational structure, roles, and access rights have been automated. You have created a mechanism for automatically creating system roles and assigning them the required access rights when creating elements in the system on which the role depends. For example, when you create a legal entity, the system automatically creates roles for it: lawyer, accountant, workflow specialist, CFO, and managing manager, and so on. You can create the required roles with custom permissions manually.

An important business requirement was the ability to adjust document negotiation routes without involving developers and system administrators. To implement this requirement, a system of directories was created that allow you to set common routes for a group of legal entities whose routes are more or less similar, and indicate exceptions for individual legal entities. The master data is managed by a team of responsible employees from the business unit. After completing the first stage of the project and implementing the system, the project team began to study the product and the possibilities for its improvement. Taking into account the growth of data, the introduction of modules, a complex system of access to documents and known restrictions, SharePoint - it was decided to optimize the second design phase and move away from the classic architectural solution SharePoint Server for SharePoint Online. After analyzing and testing alternative scenarios, increasing the load on key components of the system, a non-standard solution was found - technological modernization of the system architecture and transfer of the most complex modules to hybrid data storage.

To ensure the continuous operation of the system during the transition to the hybrid circuit, an iterative approach was applied, which allowed to regularly reduce the load on the SharePoint. First of all, archived data was migrated. Data from the SharePoint lists was transferred to a structured SQL Server-based repository deployed in the 4finity infrastructure, followed by a module-by-module migration of functionality to the embedded schema. As a result of the transition to a hybrid scheme, the speed of the system has significantly increased, additional capabilities for building reports using direct access tools have become available (PivotTables in Excel, reports in PowerBI) and specialized mechanisms for interacting with data in your own database have been implemented . This solution not only made it possible to achieve the goals, but also increased efficiency while preserving the key capabilities of SharePoint Online: file collaboration, versionality, process logic based on the SharePoint Online process engine. As a business process editor, the solution for SharePoint Online was used - the ZFlow business process editor, which allows you to configure complex business logic without involving programmers. At the same time, due to the integration of solutions, small processes, for example, processing outgoing mail notifications, were made on Power Automate. To create forms, we used our low-code solution under Office 365 ZForms, which allows you to create adaptive modern screen forms in the style of Office 365. An important requirement of the Customer for screen forms of the system was to provide a single window for viewing attachments and details, without going to separate pages or opening office applications. The capabilities of ZForms made it possible to realize this requirement without significant labor costs. With regard to infrastructure, it was also important to set up communication with existing systems. So, the main database was the HR platform, which automatically transmits information about all employees and their organizational affiliation, and the EPR system, which sends data on all financial parameters: bone centers, accounts, currencies, dementia, etc. An additional requirement was two-way communication, which allows you to optimize and automate processes within the company, Colibri had to not only receive, but also send data to other systems. To do this, a complete synchronization was made with the ERP system, where all information from the requisitions is sent to the accounting system: the account is modified and automatically reflected as a journal entry, and the request for a supplier allows any employee, even without accounting access, to initiate the creation/change of a supplier, which, after the accountant is agreed, is transferred as a vendor card to the accounting system.

The most important task we set when creating this system is an intuitive and adaptive system that is synchronized with the company's internal infrastructure. After the implementation and stabilization of the product, I can say that we achieved this. The resulting solution is easily scalable, allows you to implement changes without involving IT specialists, intuitively for users and most manual processes are automated. After the implementation of the system, due to the transparency of data, unified and automated processes, it became possible not only to reduce procurement costs, accelerate the timing of the review and approval of documents, but also to reduce the resources necessary to support and process certain requisitions by half. - said Elena Razdevilova, project manager from 4finity.

The project developed 8 modules, including the following modules and processes: Procurement management

• Procurement planning and budget monitoring
• Creation and approval of purchase requisitions (investment, commodity, operating)
• Tender of suppliers
• Checking counterparties (white and black lists)

Management of contracts

• Managing the conclusion of standard and non-standard contracts
• Harmonization of different types of contracts and supplementary agreements
• Preparation of contract package
• Faster contact creation through templates

Account and Payment Management

• Automated processing of incoming electronic accounts
• Automatic assignment of document to responsible department
• Place and approve purchase orders
• Processing of different account types, including advance and credit
• Send posting information to the accounting system
• Create a list of pending applications

Complaints

• Registration of complaints
• Consideration of complaints
• Reminders and Task Delegation

The total number of users of the system as of May 2021 is about 2000.