BIMSER: Case Studies
Manage Operations and Compliance Digitally in Automotive Industry ​
Bridgestone Turkey engages in the production and sale of tires for the automotive industry. Their production facility is one of the largest in the world producing upwards of 11M tires yearly for domestic consumption and export to Europe and the Middle East.
Challenge 1: Advance Request Process
To introduce and activate a new machine, or replace an existing machine in the production process was a predominantly manual and time consuming process requiring many paper forms and a myriad of approvals.
The Solution
eBA workflow management was implemented and integrated with the backend SAP ERP to automate the checks and approval process for procuring, installing, and testing the equipment before activating it in live production. Over 60 easy to use and create forms were created that integrate seamlessly with the SAP backend system.
The Result
Approval times were greatly reduced from 7 days to less than 1 day. For instance, the re- occuring bottleneck of not having an approver present on-site was removed through activating the ability to approve online or auto- delegate approving powers. Losing papers during the distribution process was eliminated and there is now complete visibility and auditability of the machine approval process.
Challenge 2: Advance Request Process
The invoice approval and payment process at Bridgestone was a slow-moving manual process prone to errors due to re-entering same data multiple times. Approvers required an SAP end- user license, client SAP GUI installation and training on how to use the SAP system.
The Solution
Invoices are now entered into a simple user-friendly eBA invoice form triggering a set of process flows and approvals based on company rules and once approved, the eBA invoice auto- synchs with SAP for further processing in SAP.
The Result
Significant time and error savings in the invoice-enter and approvals process. SAP end-user license and training costs savings. Reduction of paper- consumption and storage costs.
Challenge 3: Expense Reimbursement
The employee expense reimbursement process at Bridgestone was a manual paper-based process prone to errors and fraud.
The Solution
An expense reimbursement form with approval process was created in eBA workflow management and integrated with SAP Finance and SAP HR.
The Result
Significant time savings for white collar workers to enter and submit their expenses, faster approvals through process automation and near elimination of fraud. Auto reimbursement through seamless data integration into company’s HR and Finance ERP system of record.
Challenge 4: New Equipment Introduction
To introduce and activate a new machine, or replace an existing machine in the production process was a predominantly manual and time consuming process requiring many paper forms and a myriad of approvals.
The Solution
eBA workflow management was implemented and integrated with the backend SAP ERP to automate the checks and approval process for procuring, installing, and testing the equipment before activating it in live production. Over 60 easy to use and create forms were created that integrate seamlessly with the SAP backend system.
The Result
Approval times were greatly reduced from 7 days to less than 1 day. For instance, the re- occuring bottleneck of not having an approver present on-site was removed through activating the ability to approve online or auto- delegate approving powers. Losing papers during the distribution process was eliminated and there is now complete visibility and auditability of the machine approval process.
Manage Refuge Applications and Documents Digitally in Not-For-Profit Industry Nationally and Internationally
The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees was established by the United Nations General Assembly. The agency is mandated to lead and coordinate international action to protect refugees and resolve refugee problems worldwide. Its primary purpose is to safeguard the rights and well-being of refugees. It strives to ensure that everyone can exercise the right to seek asylum and find safe refuge in another State, with the option to return home voluntarily, integrate locally or to resettle in a third country. It also has a mandate to help stateless people.
Challenge 1: Migrant Registration
According to the UN Refugee Agency’s latest figures, wars, conflict and persecution globally have forced more people than at any other time since records began to flee their homes and seek refuge and safety elsewhere in 2015. Turkey especially has seen a major influx of refugees from war-torn neighboring countries and to date, has taken- in over 2.2 million Syrian refugees, the majority of which are women and children. Overall, The Republic of Turkey welcomes over 35 million visitors and aliens annually and every single entrant is documented through a registration record that must be stored and archived centrally for fast and secure retrieval. In order to expedite visitor and alien registration without compromising security interests, Turkey needed a more decentralized and digital approach to recording, capturing and retrieving visitor and alien registration records at local and regional immigration offices – and the ability to store, archive and search this data centrally in one content repository with strict restrictions on data access and sharing.
The Solution
The eBA ECM platform was selected by a joint committee of United Nations and Turkish Immigration officials to capture and digitise locally collected registration data and store them centrally in one single content repository. Key factors influencing the choice for eBA included the completeness of eBA’s capabilities around capturing, digitising and indexing paper- based documents, advanced workflow, content storage, retrieval and archiving and the ability of the platform to seamlessly integrate and communicate with various different information sources, such as the Turkish e- visa application system and various foreign embassy and consular databases.
The Result
The flood of refugees is a global humanitarian challenge that also has major security implications. Turkey has been extremely hospitable in allowing millions of new entrants to find safe harbor, and with that hospitality comes a responsibility to not only take care of refugees, but also register who is entering the country. With the help of eBA, the Turkish government now has the ability to locally capture registration data and centrally access this data in near real-time. This strengthens controls around information and security, both nationally and internationally. This document management platform – powered by eBA ECM – was implemented at 3 regional sites within 30 days and is currently being rolled-out to 95 additional sites, showcasing another major benefit of the platform: simplicity of implementation. Since going live, the system has been extremely stable, securely capturing and centrally registering millions of new entrant’s records.
Manage Asset & Maintenance Digitally in Manufacturing Industry
Unilever is a British-Dutch transnational consumer goods company co-headquartered in London, United Kingdom and Rotterdam, Netherlands. Its products include food, beverages, cleaning agents and personal care products
Challenge 1: Asset Maintenance and Management
Unilever runs its maintenance management operations with the help of paper-based documents, sheets and charts. Since day-to-day maintenance operations run on paper, it is not possible to:
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Have accurate maintenance costs
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Follow-up maintenance schedule without mistakes and mix-ups
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Have reports and having/managing maintenance costs
The Solution
Bimser implements BEAM at Unilever locations. BEAM system is configured based on Unilever’s staff, products, vendors, locations, assets, failure reasons data. When BEAM gets implemented at Unilever’s ice cream manufacturing facilities, Unilever starts to have following benefits and services from BEAM:
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Stopping paper-based maintenance operations
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Having digital transformation in maintenance management
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Managing assets (machines and equipment)
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Managing maintenance working requests and schedules
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Using graphical asset tree reporting functions of BEAM to manage maintenance operations by assets.
New-hire, salary approval, and on boarding check-list forms were created in eBA along with process and approval flows.
The Result
Unilever starts managing assets and maintenance management operations with the help of BEAM electronically. BEAM makes it easy for maintenance management team to operate maintenance tasks, manage maintenance costs and get reports to present higher management. BEAM helps Unilever reduce maintenance costs.
Challenge 1: Approvals
To introduce and activate a new machine, or replace an existing machine in the production process was a predominantly manual and time consuming process requiring many paper forms and a myriad of approvals.
The Result
Approval times were greatly reduced from 7 days to less than 1 day. For instance, the re- occuring bottleneck of not having an approver present on-site was removed through activating the ability to approve online or auto- delegate approving powers. Losing papers during the distribution process was eliminated and there is now complete visibility and auditability of the machine approval process.
Manage Asset & Maintenance Management Operations Digitally in Restaurant, Cafe & Food Industry
Starbucks Corporation is an American coffee company and coffeehouse chain. Starbucks was founded in Seattle, Washington in 1971. As of 2017, the company operates 27,339 locations worldwide.
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Shaya a multinational retail franchise operator that is headquartered in Kuwait, and operates more than 90 consumer retail brands across the Middle East and North Africa, Russia, Turkey and Europe.
Challenge 1: Asset Maintenance and Management
Shaya is the operator of Starbucks in Turkey. Starbucks has many coffee shops throughout the country. When there is a need of periodic maintenance or breakdown, individual coffee shops report it to HQ via email. Upon receiving email HQ’s maintenance unit connects subcontractors via one of the following ways:
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Writing an email to subcontractors,
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Calling subcontractors.
Following are the challenges of Starbucks:
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Having no accurate information on status on maintenance process,
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Having excess number of email communications,
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Approving subcontractor documentations and audits are done via email.
The Solution
Bimser implements BEAM at Starbucks locations. BEAM system is configured based on Starbucks’ staff, products, vendors, locations, assets, failure reasons data. When BEAM gets implemented at Starbucks’ coffee shops and HQ maintenance management unit, Starbucks starts to have following benefits and services from BEAM:
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Monitoring status of all the assets at each coffee shop on a single screen
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Assigning maintenance orders via BEAM to subcontractors
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Mobile Apps are used by subcontractors
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Starting to get reports.
The Result
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Increasing the productivity of maintenance management at HQ and sub contracts. Thanks to BEAM and its mobile app,
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Stopping pure-email based unstructured communications between HQ and subcontractors.
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Maintenance costs comes down by 30%
Manage Administrative Operations and Compliance Digitally in Pharma Industry
Astra Zeneca engages in the discovery, development, and commercialisation of prescription medicines. The company markets its products through distributors and local representative offices.
Challenge 1: Physician Conferences
Industry regulations and corporate policies require healthcare companies to be transparent about how they conduct their business, especially how they partner and collaborate with physicians and institutions in efforts to educate the healthcare community and to conduct scientific and medical research, a process most often conducted through the organisation of physician or ‘medical’ conferences. These types of conferences typically represent 20-25% of Astra Zeneca’s marketing spend and thousands of such meetings are organised yearly. Getting a handle on these conferences from an organisational, documentation, notification, approval and audit perspective was imperative to comply with governmental reporting guidelines.
The Solution
eBA workflow management forms and related approval processes were implemented to record, approve and report information on which physicians were invited and spoke at what conferences on behalf of what topics, as well as tracking the payments and transfers of value to physicians. The types of payments and transfers of value being reported include consulting fees, speaker fees, meals and travel in association with contracted services or in conjunction with a product or informational discussion, educational items, research and development, royalties, license fees, and ownership or investment interests.
The Result
Besides greatly reducing the administrative process and automating the manual steps involved in organising these meetings, eBA allows Astra Zeneca to provide complete insight into the physician conferences required from both internal and external audit bodies, allowing them to be in compliance with national and international regulations and reporting guidelines.
Challenge 2: Campaign Price Approvals
Medicines no longer protected by patent approval require more active campaigns and promotions against generic alternatives, for example Nexium (“the purple pill”). Approvals for campaign pricing was a manual process and central documentation on price history was absent.
The Solution
A price approval form and process was developed in eBA workflow management to request campaign prices and receive approvals based on pre-set rules and process flows. By putting this process on eBA a history of price requests and approvals is documented and saved by the eBA system.
The Result
A faster and more agile pricing approval process combined with greater control and visibility into a drug’s pricing history, improving productivity.
Challenge 3: Recurrent Policies Acknowledgements
On an annual basis, AstraZeneca requires its employees to review, acknowledge or update a “conflict-of-interest” form in-line with the corporation’s policies. This yearly reoccuring process was manual, paper-based, time-consuming process and hard to properly audit.
The Solution
An eBA conflict-of-interest approval form and process flow, integrated with master data from the company’s HR application, was created that automatically sends employees a notification on a yearly basis to review the corporate policy and update the company on any changes that may have occurred.
The Result
A manual, time-consuming process was completely automated saving Astrazeneca operational costs, speeding-up the process, reducing risk and strengthening corporate and industry compliance.
Manage Work Flows, Documents and Contracts Digitally in Automotive Industry
In 1994, Nissan was the first Japanese carmaker to establish a regional headquarters in the Middle East, when it setups an office in Dubai under the name of “Nissan Middle East FZE”. Today, Nissan Middle East operations span over 22 countries from Azerbaijan to Yemen and from Turkey to Turkmenistan.
Challenge 1: eBA Workflow and Document Management
Nissan runs a lot of In-house projects and deals with lot of vendors to their project. When the projects are prepared, all the budgets are maintained in traditional excel sheets and upload the same to a third party application.
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Following are the challenges of Nissan:
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Budgets approval has no tracking, every approval is via e-mail.
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Decision Form is raised in third party application to block the budgets for the project. However, there are no tracking or approval matrix available.
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Procurement team is unable to via the Decision Form during approval to negotiate with vendor for pricing.
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Purchase Order/Invoice requisition is through third party application.
The Solution
Experion Technology MEA (One of our strategic partner) implements eBA Workflow and Document Management at Middle East. With eBA Workflow Management, all the tasks from budget approval until invoice to SAP integration is made easy and transparent to the users of all departments.
The Result
Faster leave request approvals, improved user experience and elimination of manual HR data upload.
Solution 2: Contract Manager
What is Achieved:
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Budget is approved by the relevant stakeholders, if rejected, the budget is revised or reallocated.
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Decision Forms are now linked to budget; hence users are aware of the remaining budget-amount available for their divisions before raising a budget for their particular projects.
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Procurement team has easy access to view Decision Forms, which helps them raise a RFP for a project and invite more vendors to participate and get the best rates to execute the project. All these are tracked and managed on eBA.
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Purchase Order process is made easy. eBA helps users see the budgets approved and raise PO’s accordingly.
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Invoices raised by vendors are tracked and matched against each Purchase Order with milestones of work completion.
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Invoices are approved by finance team and as eBA has integration with SAP a seamless posting of transactions are almost immediate post to the approval from finance.
The Result
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Increasing the productivity of maintaining all approvals for different processes in one application, thanks to eBA Workflow Management.
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Stopping pure e-mail based unstructured communications between line managers and budget controllers.
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Over head of managing multiple applications to run different processes is reduced significantly.
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More transparency between all parties and planning/reporting made easy.
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