FLSmidth at a Glance
As one of the leading suppliers of services and equipment to cement and mineral industries worldwide, FLSmidth is a major engineering company and is listed on NASDAQ OMX Nordic Exchange.
Founded as a small consultancy in 1882, the company's headquarters are located in Copenhagen, Denmark, and with branches across the globe, FLSmidth's reach is extensive. Supplying everything from “single machinery to complete cement plants and minerals processing facilities, including services before, during and after the construction”, the company is deeply invested in developing innovative solutions to meet future energy and emissions challenges.
The Challenge
FLSmidth is a globally renowned company that has been in existence for over a century. With years of history and experience, the South African branch had an archaic, exceptionally basic and very time-consuming procurement system in place. The process for having purchases approved involved many intricate steps, and in some cases, up to five signatures were required to get the ball rolling. In a fast-moving world, a waiting game is unrealistic and can be a serious setback for business.
The Solution
With an existing business relationship already firmly in place, FLSmidth turned to Synergy Group to do their thing. With an exceptionally skilled and knowledgeable consultant base, and the extreme expertise of the development team, FLSmidth expected only outstanding service and a world-class solution from Synergy.
Stephan Kruger, Manager of the Procurement Department of FLSmidth in South Africa, comments: “We always have very high expectations for Synergy Group. This project was a success and they delivered everything we anticipated. We will continue to turn to them for assistance in the future.”
Synergy's solution was to automate the entire approval process (with electronic signatures) and customise the Purchasing Workflow suite, putting it into a class of superhero power.
Not only were extra functions added, the existing features that make this product so sophisticated and stable were enhanced. Synergy's customisation has given FLSmidth even tighter control and management of their procurement systems – without the headache.
The Nitty Gritty
The Purchasing Workflow suite, before being customised with its extra boost of potency, is already a near-perfect solution. POW provides a refined and above-standard workflow engine with configurable rules, routing and approval functions and an easy-to-use requisition interface that creates documents that are controlled through the workflow process. Then when Synergy gets its hands on it, magic happens.
Synergy's development team took an incredibly intricate and complicated workflow process and broke it down into chunks of logic; three specific categories that define each requisition and the steps that need to be followed were determined.
The Terms and Conditions template was rewritten to include an automatic editing function; based on extra fields added in the requisition screen, any information or values entered are fed into the Ts and Cs and updated in the background.
Along with logic and automatic editing, other features were rewritten or added to FLSmidth's POW suite:
- Pre-assignment of Purchase Order numbers (meaning PO numbers are already generated at the point of requisition, ensuring all purchases orders falling under the same umbrella are kept in numerical order and existing POs can be amended using new requisitions).
- The functionality to amend existing POs by creating new requisitions and referencing said POs was added.
- A Web Requisition Approval Interface was developed (allowing the preview of requisitions and any attached documents and the addition of multiple comments before declining/approving).
- The creation of the PO at the final step of the workflow process was rewritten to allow users to indicate which of the attached documents should be sent to all vendors concerned.
- The ability to export all attached documents and related electronic correspondence to a procurement folder on the network was added.
- Additional functionality was added to the workflow engine by assigning a certain step in the workflow to a system-assigned user, without changing the way the workflow functions.
Wessel Janse van Rensburg, Managing Director of Synergy Group, comments: “It is always a challenge to meet a client's exact requirements while ensuring the solution also takes care of any future challenges that may arise. We never want our clients to experience any problems with their systems and are constantly looking forward to ensure our solutions do not only cater for the here and now.”
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