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.
