KYOCERA Document Solutions
Gauteng-based Griffin Procurement Services offers customised project procurement and logistics solutions to construction, oil & gas, mining, tourism, forestry, agriculture, and commerce companies across Southern Africa. To ensure reliable, timeous, and customised delivery of cross-border projects in remote sites, the company needs an efficient information management backbone.
The Business Challenge
Based on its years of experience in challenging operating environments, Griffin Procurement Services developed a set of processes and procedures to help clients to manage the complex moving parts of procurement in remote locations in Southern Africa. However, the systems and processes driving its business were cumbersome and fragmented, and the high levels of manual intervention required in each process made it difficult to scale and grow.
Though Griffin Procurement Services wanted to automate its workflow, it struggled to identify a solution that would support the complexities of its business. Most “off-the-shelf” solutions evaluated were designed to support procurement processes based on predefined inventory. But since two thirds of the items Griffin Procurement Services procures for customers are once-off purchases, a solution based on inventory lists would not be a good fit for the company.
What’s more, Griffin Procurement Services could not identify a suitable integrated solution that would enable it to automate its end-to-end business, from quoting and ordering, to invoicing, shipping and payments. Document management had also become complex and unwieldy, due to the sheer volume of paperwork involved in procurement.
Solution
When Griffin Procurement Services came across the process automation and enterprise content management solution—supplied through Kyocera Document Solutions South Africa — it recognised that the platform was exactly what it had been looking for. Griffin Procurement Services decided to implement this ECM solution as a standardised, automated, and scalable platform that would save money for the business and time for its people.
Griffin Procurement Services is using the process-driven workflows to automate processes across quoting, ordering and payments. Key features of the solution include easy sharing of information, security through user & access control, audit trails, centralised administration, collaboration, and rich reporting capabilities.
Kyocera Document Solutions South Africa and Griffin Procurement Services invested a great deal of effort in the initial scoping of the project to understand the complex processes driving the business, as well as the expected outcomes. This helped to smooth out the implementation process. After initial installation, Kyocera and Griffin Procurement Services worked closely to design, test and refine processes to ensure the best possible outcomes.
Kyocera went beyond expectations in terms of our process automation.
Louise Jones
Business Benefits
The implementation of the ECM solution has enabled Griffin Procurement Services to shift from user-driven processes to process-driven operations with the following benefits:
Streamlined document generation
Documents are generated in less time, with a consistent, professional look and feel.
Accountable collaboration
Allocation of tasks to team members, with monitoring, follow-up, checking and enforcement of accountability.
Faster turnaround times
The ECM solution has improved turnaround times by 60% across payments and quoting.
Scalability for growth
Griffin Procurement Services can now take on more clients easily without adding overhead costs.
Better planning and organisation
The ECM solution has made planning and organisation across complex processes easier, faster, and more accurate.
Efficient document management and storage
Electronic documents are saved in a central, searchable repository.
Tighter controls
This implementation has enabled far greater levels of control over processes, such as payments.
Improved accuracy
Information only required to be captured once and most data capture errors have been eliminated.
Discipline
The ECM solution enforces process discipline and ensures that procedures are followed.