Flour and bakery product manufacturer Allied Mills needed a consistent user-friendly app available on mobile devices to do approvals. IQX Business Solutions had the solution.
The challenge
“One environment for people to do approvals,” was Campbell’s objective. “What we needed was a consistent, user-friendly app available on multiple platforms including mobile devices.”
Allied Mills Ltd is one of Australia’s largest manufacturers and distributors of bakery premixes, flour and semi-finished products.
“Whilst SAP is our core ERP platform, SharePoint has been adopted for company-wide collaboration,” said Allied Mills Ltd IT manager, John Campbell. “Many internal workflow processes simply do not belong in SAP and this led to the adoption of K2 as a complementary workflow platform”.
“User frustration with SAP workflow inconsistency was a barrier to adoption and productivity. Even within SAP, different workflows required different user interactions. In addition, the introduction of SAP Leave Request approval via the ESS Portal introduced yet another approval interface,” Campbell pointed out.
“Ultimately, the business impact was that approval decisions were not taken in a timely manner, resulting in delays”.
Allied Mills has a desire to promote the trend of pushing the transaction execution to end users resulting in mobility being a key requirement.
The journey
Allied Mills and IQX worked in close collaboration to deliver the solution, resulting in an improved product with innovative customer led features and configurable options. The OneList product was designed with re-use, flexibility and supportability in mind.
The capability of the product was best demonstrated in the customer returns order process. “Here we were able to combine all the related information and present this to the business decision makers in a clear manner for approval,” says Campbell.
“At present we have iPads in the field, but are considering moving to windows tablets so the native iOS and HTML5 options for OneList ticks the boxes in terms of device flexibility,” adds Campbell.
According to Campbell, Allied Mills plan to continue a close relationship with IQX. “We’re not there yet in terms of self-reliance. Our ongoing partnership with IQX is important to ensure that we have input into the way the product is enhanced. IQX provides the variety of skills necessary to supplement our team as needed and to provide flexible support as we mature.”
The results
“The silence has been amazing. This is a sign of things going really well!” a relaxed John Campbell joked after going live with OneList. “But seriously, we have had very good feedback from our business. The responsiveness of OneList, the ability to action tasks anywhere and the common look and approach have been the key features. After training a third of the 90 managers, further adoption has been driven by word of mouth.”
Workflows from SAP, SharePoint and K2 have been consolidated with OneList, and the approach is aligned with Allied Mills’ IT strategy.
“We have turned around the previous behavior – where users lacked the time or motivation to find information – to one where they now readily participate directly in approvals. Having the flexibility to get the related data presented in a user friendly manner was the key,” says Campbell.
“It’s all about delivering business value now and into the future.”
Company: Allied Mills Pty Ltd
Product: OneList Approvals
Systems integrated: SAP ECC, SAP Portal, Sharepoint, K2
Workflows implemented: Purchase orders, logistic invoices, AP invoice, leave
requests, customer price changes, returns authorisation, CAPEX, HR
personal details.
This case study is sponsored by IQX Business Solutions, and first appeared in the Inside SAP Yearbook 2014 (September 2013).
