New business process portal helps global organisation

The solution

The journey with Sorce started in the late 1990’s. With the help of a dedicated software development team based in Sri Lanka. They have used the application development tools that Sorce’s Engage intranet software provides to create a central gateway that has become an integral part of the organisation. This gateway is accessed from the UK, USA, Sri Lanka and China. It has been aptly named ‘The Portal’.

Using forms within Engage the development team has created a number of business critical applications. Just some of these time saving solutions include:

A Change Control application which is used to handle change requests from users globally. They achieve SOX compliance requirements through this approval process (the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, often shortened to SOX, is legislation to protect shareholders and the general public from accounting errors and fraudulent practices in the enterprise, as well as improve the accuracy of corporate disclosures). This important application has replaced a manual approval process; time has been saved now that emails are no longer tracked during audits.

A Support Desk is used across all sites to handle general IT support requests for which approval is not required. The application supports SOX compliance control and is used to facilitate individual and consolidated reporting requirements.

A Purchasing & Inventory application used to maintain IT purchasing, supplier and inventory information. This business solution has transformed the whole manual purchasing and inventory process into an easy to maintain, online application which handles automated renewal notifications, purchasing and inventory reports and analysis.

A Rejection Database used to maintain material and work in progress stock items rejected at production. The database is fully integrated with the company Enterprise Report Planning (ERP) solution and provides functionality not available within that system. Cost savings and improvements in efficiency are gained through saving production time and effort in manual maintenance of material and work in progress item rejects at production lines. The database provides easy access to item reject information by different department members and facilities their reporting requirements.

An Out Worker System used to process and maintain outworker jobs, stock and outworker payment information. The application is fully integrated with the ERP system and provides functionality that the ERP does not. This business solution has hugely improved efficiency by saving production, accounts and stores time and effort in manual maintenance of outworkers, jobs, issued materials, returns, completed quantity and payments.

The development team has also created a number of .Net based solutions which are integrated within The Portal. All applications are integrated with the ERP system and save huge amounts of time and effort across all departments in automated data extraction and manipulation. These include:

An Enquiry Review Program which is used globally to review customer request for quotations by all the departments, send quotations to customers and automatically raise sales orders in the ERP system.

An IP Manager application has been developed to maintain all devices IP information globally.

A Purchase Requisition Raiser system for all the departments to raise PO requisitions and notify Purchasing.

A PDM Parts Acceptance system to extract engineering confirmed items and routing information from their Product Data Management system (PDM), verify correctness through several conditions and write them into the ERP system or display errors.

A Weekly Planning Reports application processes and maintains weekly production plans and notifies all the parties involved through email.

The Portal is also used for 3rd party applications that are linked to the company so users can easily access them. This linking is used for enquiry review, extracts item information from the ERP, and writes confirmed sales order information back.

The Portal is setup with external sites for several customers to place requests for quotations with the company. This facility makes it easy to keep track of quotation statuses quickly and efficiently, view historical information and limit manual customer communications leaving time to focus on crucial customer updates.

The Portal is very rich in information and has numerous document management sites for departments and topics. These include Human Resources, Quality Assurance, Purchasing, IT, Marketing and for Policies and Procedures.

The development team has developed a number of contract management sites with automated expiry notifications on, or prior to, expiry date. This allows all contracts to be kept up to date and renewed appropriately. Examples of contracts includes procurement contracts, general agreements, QA calibrated equipment register, quality assurance contracts, approved supplier register, supplier tooling register and a work instruction review system.

The result

AmSafe Bridport’s self-sufficient development team has created The Portal over several years. They have developed a dynamic, scalable, business critical solution which is now fully embedded into the culture of the organisation.

With increased efficiency, the time and cost savings are remarkable. All new day to day business requests are fed through the development team who will always look to Sorce to meet the needs of many varied requirements.