Business Legal Solutions Custos Group (ТЕЗИС)

Customer

Business Legal Solutions Custos Group is a law company which is engaged in comprehensive legal support of activity of all divisions of travel agency PEGAS Touristik in the territory of Russia – service of agreements, consideration of complaints, claims, representation of interests of the company in court, etc. of PEGAS Touristik – the leader of the Russian and international tourist industry. The company works in 50 cities of Russia, cooperates with the leading airlines, has 860 sales offices in 244 cities of Russia.

Situation

BLS Custos Group operates with a big document file and agreements which undergo long and multi-stage approvals. The company works with legal documents of different types - agreements, claims, claims, etc., each of which undergoes own way of drawing up, testing and approvals. In particular, documents are formed at offices of clients across all Russia, and are checked at office BLS Custos Group in Moscow. Besides, the company needs reliable storage and movement of legal documents between the company and its clients.

By the time of making decision on system implementation of the automated document flow, in the company there was already an understanding that it should be the ready-made product with a possibility of independent development and modification. Thereby in the company aimed to minimize risks of dependence on vendor and its specifics.

In selection process the following criteria were applied to future ESM:

• Broad functionality of an initial drawing product, in particular – existence of a possibility of parallel approval, return and completion of the document, etc.;

• Flexibility and expansibility of a system – an opportunity to independently automate individual processes. To the customer it was also important that the solution was based on modern available technologies and did not cause difficulties in the course of independent development;

• Full-function web access as important criterion for work to the organizations with geographically distributed offices;

• Security and reliability of a system as in it work with the confidential documents containing personal data of clients was assumed;

• Image and experience of the developer. The opinion of users gathered and reliability of the solutions presented at the market was checked.

Choice justification

Within several months search of a suitable system was performed. The products presented at the market or did not approach under specifics of legal work, or the companies rather simply would not allow and successfully independently to finish a system under individual processes of the movement of documents.

"All we considered 4-5 systems, most of them had a profile of purely "secretarial" document flow and did not meet our requirements fully. Most optimum under our requests the THESIS system approached, besides, it required the minimum completions", - the system administrator Yury Novolokov told.

Project Implementation

In December, 2012 the management of BLS Custos Group finally stopped the choice on the THESIS ESM-system. The decision to use TEZIS as a reference platform for further development and completion of a system under unique requirements of the company was made. For the subsequent setup and development of the solution the system administrator knowing the Java programming language was selected.

At the beginning of February, 2013 a system was far off installed on the customer's server in Turkey. Then at general office of the company in Moscow started operation of a system. After input online training setup of the main functionality of a system by the administrator of the company, in particular, filling of reference books, installation of new sets of roles and restrictions of users, etc. began. Active correspondence of the administrator with THESIS system technical support service was conducted.

If up to this point work in a system had fact-finding character, basic functions were configured, successful independent attempts to create projects of expansion were made, then on the next stage at the specialist of customer company need for training for deeper understanding of process of creation of projects of expansion in the THESIS ESM-system was designated. In June, 2013 two-week rates for the system administrator on creation based on the system of expansion units were organized.

Further until the end of the year the Customer according to plan developed a system on the basis of basic functionality under specifics of business processes of the company. Implementation of the integrated and unified legal maintenance of activity of the company – order taking and verification of agreements, claims, legal claims was the purpose.

Modification affected verification process, approvals and maintaining agreements, having made it continuous. Besides, function of the choice of the following participant of process was automated. As a result of improvements, document handling began to be performed "in one click". For convenience of business management the different interface and graphic design was developed for legal division and sales offices, sets of user rights, etc. are modified.

Result

Based on the THESIS system the BLS Custos Group company carried out completely independent complex workflow automation in all divisions of the company, including sales offices. Now in a system over 90 users already work. Adaptation of the solution under needs of the company taking into account the existing and new business processes continues.

Currently in the company the following processes are automated:

• processing of requests for verification of agreements with partners, from the application moment before the termination of the duration of the agreement;

• internal document flow and performing discipline;

• processing of work requests with claims of consumers;

• ensuring process of representation of interests in court.

"For some large customers advantage of a system is the open program code of ESM THESIS and the public Java programming language. It gives the chance to the Customer independently, without the additional appeal to vendor to automate the unique business processes on the basis of a system, thereby reducing finance costs" - Ivan Laskin, the head of electronic document management of Haulmont company comments.

Organizational and finance costs also decrease due to lack of need of acquisition of the additional software – in work software is used public, and a system is cross-platform.

"If there is no need to work offline, then TEZIS is the best of the known systems. Other products with a possibility of completion by the user are not presented at the Russian market", - the BLS Custos Group system administrator Irina Pinyaeva summed up.

"The Customer has a choice – it can not only develop a system with our help, but also manage by own forces or address one of our regional partners. There is a mass of the mixed options, for example, to order from us an implementation service and integration with external systems, and to scale and develop a system independently, etc." - Ivan Laskin comments.

The example of this project shows that features of the THESIS system allow the Customer to develop successfully a system independently taking into account internal specifics and individual business processes.