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At a leading telecommunications service provider, the workflow was being significantly slowed by the 5,000 new work orders coming in each year for mobile telephony sites. Each of these work orders required signature approvals, large number of documentation justifications from various departments and regions, as well as subcontractors and clients. The telecommunications service provider was relying on antiquated paper-based processes for its project approvals, a process that was significantly obstructing the organization's ability to efficiently advance its workflow. By implementing the E-Sites e-acceptance solution, the organization was able to integrate an end to end electronic acceptance solution into their online portal and achieved significant efficiency and cost savings improvement by collaborating all their internal users, subcontractors, and client.
A Call for Help
By shifting to a paperless workflow, the organization sought to reduce the paper-related and transportation costs associated with document-intensive workflow of their mobile telephony projects, enhance their collaborative capabilities, and expedite their workflow. The transition would also allow the company to utilize a collaborative online portal where all the complex approval procedures involving various parties and stakeholders could be fully completed electronically. By integrating a digital signature solution, sms based alerts they aimed to maintain an electronic process from document creation through the signature authorization process, leveraging the full capability of their automated procedures and maintaining compliance with their own standards for non-repudiation and document integrity.
Operational Assistance
A key business need was a collaborative proactive based solution that would prevent the organization from being forced to reintroduce vast amounts of paper into its electronic business processes, thereby inhibiting progress, making their online portal ineffective, and increasing costs.
“We were sinking under mountains of paper, with no real visibility of the entire process. This was seriously causing cash being tied up and imposition of LD’s on our contracts with our client. We realized we had to manage the whole certification process in a new way which eliminates the cumbersome paper logistics, and which allows easy collaboration between the various stakeholders, both internal and external. We also needed to improve management visibility, so we could assess our performance, forecast and plan more accurately,” said one of the organization’s project managers.
Answering the Call for Workflow Improvements
The organization’s need to free up cash, improve visibility, guarantee non-repudiation and data integrity were key challenges in their pursuit of a online acceptance solution. Due to the significant breadth of the project, the company hired Take United, a leading Asian based software company - to handle the design, implementation and operation of the project. Take United understood that its E-Sites e-Acceptance module utilizing its Business Process Management Framework engine used to power its e-Sites solution was capable of providing a solution to meet the company’s complete requirements.
“When we initially began to understand their business problem, we quickly understood that our e-Sites e-Acceptance solution together with digital signatures and SMS alerts were an ideal solution” said Mohana krishnan, Head of Software Development at Take United. “Given the challenges of needing to manage some 1000 odd users spread across a wide geographic region, we further enhanced our e-Sites on line capabilities to include off line applications to ensure maximum uptime for the solution.”
In addition to the organization's non-repudiation and integrity requirements, they also sought a digital signature solution that would allow for web-based signing without the need for signers to download any proprietary software or plug-ins.
"We needed a solution that we could easily integrate within the proposed web-based application, without imposing any plug-in or ActiveX requirement on the end-users," said Mohana Krishnan. "We had to come up with a solution that worked for both the client and any number of third parties, each with their own infrastructure. This solution also had to work within a standard web browser."
Making the Call
The e-Sites e-Acceptance solution integrated with the organization’s global Enterprise Project Management system would address both, the organization's non-repudiation and document integrity needs, as well as the paperless signing requirement in their new automated approach. With its ability to work out-of-the-box, its centrally managed server-based approach to providing collaboration and visibility, and its simple integration with .NET web-based technologies, the leading telecommunications service provider felt that Take United’s e-Sites e-acceptance solution was the ideal final component to the telecommunication services provider’s business needed.
Take United seamlessly integrated the e-Sites e-Acceptance solution into the global Enterprise Project Management system providing an online portal that addressed all the telecommunications services provider’s needs for e-acceptance, collaboration, and visibility and action ability. All documentation is handled electronically in soft copy formats.
To further enhance security and provide two-factor user authentication, Take United implemented text message delivery of a One-Time-Password (OTP) whenever a user requests a signature operation within the online portal. The ability for SAPI to manage user accounts programmatically, on the fly, allowed very easy integration of the OTP, providing a robust two-factor user authentication mechanism.
The complete solution enables documents to be created, approved, and digitally signed in PDF format, directly from within the online portal. This capability considerably reduces the time and cost of workflow processes and enables fully electronic approval processes. Utilizing standards-based technology for digital signatures on electronic records fulfills the organization’s complex certification needs for non-repudiated approvals by both internal staff, and external subcontractors and clients.
A Warm Reception
The organization currently processes roughly 15,000 documents with 32,000 digital signatures being applied each year by over 100 different users looking after the construction of over 3000 mobile cell sites. Paper signature-related costs (printing, scanning, archiving, routing and replacing lost documents), high documentation transportation costs, high project staffing costs, high LD imposition costs, have been eliminated, bringing huge annual savings to the telecommunications service provider which more then paid for the cost of implementing the e-Acceptance solution. More importantly, the telecommunications service provider was seeing a significant reduction in its “cash in times” for submission of invoicing.
“We are very happy with the online portal and its e-acceptance capabilities,” says one of the company’s project managers. “It gives us the foundation for efficiently managing our operations today, and substantially scaling it up going forward”.
Lessons Learned
The implementation of e-Sites e-acceptance solution highlights clear advantages brought about by utilizing technology standards to provide for customer engagement, collaboration, visibility and non repudiation. Amongst some of the clear benefits that have been realized include
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Key Benefit
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Estimate Results
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1. Improvement in cash in times by improving efficiency and timeliness of the acceptance process between the Telecommunications service provider and its client operator
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Cash-in times from scope of work completion to billing submission have reduced from an access of 180 days prior to implementation of the solution to less than 30 days now. In addition missing documentation during final approval submission, which was a main challenge, previously, had reduced to almost zero.
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2. Reduction in imposition of LD charges by the Operator.
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By providing up to date visibility information, a number of factors contributing to project delays that had previously lead to LD imposition have been identified as being caused by operator sign off delays. In respect of these operator delays (which was identified as a large contributor to LD imposition), the operator has recognized its delays and this now does not form a part of the LD calculations. Total LD imposition has since reduced by around 50% and is further improving as the telecommunications service provider take steps to address the delay’s on its and its subcontractors part. With respect to its subcontractors delay’s, the telecommunications service provider is now also in a position to pass on LD charges that are caused by its subcontractor delays.
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3. Reduction in project logistics and operations cost by providing an online collaboration platform including online documentation submission to enable interaction between the telecommunications service provider, its subcontractors and the Operator personnel.
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Clear bottom line savings have been achieved in the areas of paper costs, documentation transportation costs, project team travel costs, acceptance processing staff reductions. Costs savings on logistics and staffing have reduced by more that 60%
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4. Reduction in inventory turn around time by Integrating E-Sites e-Acceptance module with the telecommunications service provider’s enterprise project management tool, to enable ease of collaboration and visibility between project management and acceptance processes.
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Whilst the telecommunications service provider’s global enterprise project management system ensured proper internal planning, it however did not provide for “engagement with its operator client. By Integrating the e-Acceptance module (which provides operator and subcontractors accessibility) to the telecommunications internal project management tool, milestone and acceptance level data is exchanged on a daily basis. This enables end-to-end visibility on scope of work progress and revenue contributing site acceptance progress. Both applications complement each other’s strengths to drive business efficiency improvements. Given the up to date information available – better planning on in country delivery and SDR occurs resulting in savings on asset turn around time.
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5. Improvement in subcontractor performance management by providing on-line access to subcontractors to measure their performance
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As a result of subcontractor interaction into the solution, the telecommunications service provider is able to have up to date information on its subcontractor’s performance which enables the telecommunications service provider to not only arrest potential delays but also contribute to its selection criteria when engaging sub contractors based on previous track record.
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6. Enhanced client operator “engagement” by providing a collaborative solution that would engage the client operator and be the agreed and non-repudiate source for project and acceptance status information.
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This key benefit has been significantly overachieved. Today, the e-Acceptance solution is being used by both the client operators staff and the telecommunications service provider’s project teams as the basis for acceptance approval, project status information. As the solution is accessible by all parties, it has formed the basis for an agreeable and non-repudiate source for agreed information.
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About Take United
TAKE UNITED SDN. BHD (TAKE United) is a ICT Technology business management company with principal focus in Software Development, Supply Chain Management (SCM), Application software solutions for the Telecommunications industry and Enterprise Infrastructure Management. Formed in 2002, Take United is headquartered out of the Multi Media Super Corridor (MSC) in Kuala Lumpur Malaysia and has offices in Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and China. Today, Take United has over 150 staff serving a large marquee customer base throughout the Far East markets.
Led by a dynamic management team with combined experience of over 100 years, we provide ICT solutions for Government, Telecommunications, FMCG, Distribution, Airlines, Automotive, Manufacturing and Logistics markets. Since its inception in 2002 TAKE United has earned the distinction of being one of the pioneers of BPM based application software developments in the region.
To support the mission critical requirements of our clients, we operate our primary software development center in the Multimedia Super Corridor Malaysia (MSC), with secondary off shore development centers in India and China. This is augmented by our in country support operations in the geographies we operate in. For more information on Take United, please visit us at www.takeunited.com .
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Case Studies