MAGAZINE No. 43 | Training Citizen Developers: Jamio featured in Short Master's program at the University of Turin

FOREWORD

Many organizations' business processes are extended or intercompany processes, that is, they extend beyond the boundaries of the organization.

These processes can include collaboration and information exchange between companies or entities to create value for all involved. We can identify them for example in supply chain management involving suppliers, but also in customer relationship management , business partnerships (with partners or agents), inter-company collaboration, shared logistics, coordination of projects between different organizations, or even in some Recruiting activities.

One doesn't always have full awareness of managing an extensive process in one's own organization, and it may be the case that if one sets out to streamline the process with the support of IT tools, going so far as to digitize it, one tends to exclude the piece of the flow involving external entities or organizations. However, even if this doesn't happen, this represents a neuralgic point of management.

Instead, effective management of such processes is achieved precisely by using appropriate tools to govern and monitor the entire flow, avoiding a multiplicity of systems and a redundancy of information. And to gain efficiency by outsourcing activities that would otherwise be performed in-house.

In this issue we try to discover how by looking at the use case of Estimates Management of interest in supplychain-procurement.

ORGANIZATIONAL NEEDS

Suppose we are on a construction site and in this setting, as in so many other settings, the materials procurement process requires careful planning, diligent management and effective communication with suppliers in order to ensure the success of the construction project. The need is to manage the initial phase of this process, which is that of supplier evaluation.

Having defined the materials that need to be procured, the purchasing department of an organization needs to request a quote for the same supply from N potential suppliers, asking each one for both the quote and other information in order to make a proper assessment.

The simplest and most commonly used way to manage this process is as follows, where the activities are all in the charge of a purchasing office operator who:

1) Define the list of materials in an excel table;

2) composes in word or other instrument like a letter of request for quotation in which it enters the details of the requested supply;

3) Composes a generic email attaching the request and sends it N times to various recipients or uses CCN;

4) waits for the N recipients to respond by e-mail;

5) collects individual responses, as they come in, into a folder;

6) analyze all the answers;

7) aggregates into a comparative table with the information obtained.

This flow makes use of individual productivity tools such as word, e-mail and excel that, while supporting the operator, still leave him or her the owner of everything.

Providers participate indirectly in the flow, but they are autonomous in their operations and the information they provide requires subsequent processing. The result is a great waste of time and possible errors.

THE SOLUTION.

By trying to manage this flow with a process automation tool such as Jamio, we instead achieve complete end-to-end automation of the process, including the collection and aggregation of responses from external parties with significant time and cost benefits and more.

The previously decribed flow becomes as follows.

The purchasing office operator:

1) defines the list of materials in a special tab in the system and indicates the recipients by selecting them from a master file, also in the same interaction tab;

2) click on a button to delegate all other tasks to the system.

The system, in full automation:

3) Self-composes the letter of request for proposal, customized for each supplier;

4) Create a questionnaire for the provider, and prepare a link to it;

5) self-composes the accompanying e-mail, customized for each supplier, including the link to the questionnaire and attaching the letter of request for quotation, and sends it out;

6) Monitors the completion of the questionnaire, collects the outcomes and reports them in the application form;

The purchasing office operator can thus simply and uniquely:

7) consult the outcomes and information collected in real time, again in the same interaction tab.

Clearly, all those human activities that involve loss of time and margin for error, such as filling out the request for proposal or e-mail from predefined templates or collecting and aggregating responses, are thus devolved to a computer system.

Not only that, participation in the process by the external actors, the suppliers, becomes active, as the supplier imputes in a guided manner his information into an object-the questionnaire-orchestrated by the system. This enables real-time knowledge of the outcomes directly in the system, moreover without the need to distribute credentials to the supplier.

THE BENEFITS.

• reduction of management time
• reduction of errors
• Increased branding reputation with suppliers
• Instant Sharing of Data and Documents
• Employment of operators in higher value-added activities
• Organizational efficiency