Purchasing Software Client News

Very occasionally we may publish news regarding some of our latest client ...... Today Mikrofax welcome SE Hotels in Charlotte NC, USA as new clients - looking forward to a long and happy association !  They immediately saw the benefit of using our purchasing software to assist them with their procurement practice across all their managed hotels including part of the Wyndham Hotel Brand.  Visit www.mikrofax.com to find out more.

eProcurement and ePurchasing Integration with 3rd Party Systems

We have found our clients are continually looking for best of breed in purchasing software systems and eProcurement tools and Requisition Approvals - not satisfied with simply putting in an Accounting tool to attempt to everything in a mediocre fashion.  Our clients come to us to get the best in eProcurement tools - during 2012 we have seen a definite uptick in the volume of business PLUS a certain pattern of inquiries keeps repeating - one of the most common is does your system play with other Enterprise solutions like SAP or Oracle for instance ?  The reason for these questions is that those type of huge Enterprise solutions are vital to the operations of all large business but horribly unwieldy to use - so our clients come to us for elegant front ends that talk well to their back ends ..and that what we do.  If you are looking for systems integration be is from low level Sage Timberline or Quickbooks solutions to upper tier SAP or Oracle or GP  then let the team at Mikrofax know - we can help !  We have done it before !!

Multi-Level Approvals Are Not Just For Finance

The Mikrofax eProcurement solution has a mature process for performing financial approvals before any purchase is actually undertaken within your business.

In other words you may want to purchase a new laptop for your bueinsss - so you complete the correct Request screen and send it up the management hierachy for financial approval - someone has to actually pay for it right ?

So lets say that it goes to your boss ... and he electronically approves it via his Blackberry ..... that triggers an approval email to Finance where someone then checks your required spend against the available budget ...and finds that, yes you can afford it ...so they approve it too .... so you are all set !...........right ?

Not so fast ........ all we are talking about so far ..is financial approval ...but what if the laptop you wish to buy is say a DELL laptop but your company only supports IBM laptops ..... what happens then ?

Its not Finance's job to stop it .. as far as they are concerned ......... provided you have the available budget then you can go ahead and buy it .......

What you need here is a 'Sanity check' approval ...in other words a "yes, we can afford it but does it make sense to buy it" approval.

Mikrofax's eProcurement solution has multiple financial approvals BUT it also has multiple levels of Sanity Check approvals so the Request can, for example, get routed via the IT department or via the Engineering dept to see if they are also happy with the purchase ...........

Makes sense ? We think so !

If you think it makes sense as well then shoot us an email if you would like to see the process in action !

Hundreds of companies around the world use our purchasing software to improve their internal approvals process and budget control.

Mikrofax Purchasing Software : UAE eProcurement case study

Case Study - Mikrofax eProcurement at Crescent Petroleum in United Arab Emirates

The Client :

Crescent Petroleum has been operating as a regional upstream oil and gas company in the United Arab Emirates for almost forty years. It began its activities in the early 1970’s and was the first regional, independent, privately-owned Middle Eastern petroleum company to engage in the acquisition, exploration and development of petroleum concessions; and the production and sale of crude oil, petroleum products and natural gas.

It is headquartered in Sharjah in the UAE, with international offices strategically located in the UK, Iraq and Iran and affiliate offices in Canada and Egypt.

The Problem:

Crescent realized they faced some challenges with their procurement system and set up a project to analyze and solve the challenges they were facing.
Rakesh Edavalath, Supply Chain and Contracts Manager at Crescent stated, that some of the challenges faced were,

• Material Requests were on pre-printed hard copies and were very difficult to trace and track. Many times this resulted in dropping the ball on critical requirements. This in turn resulted in additional costs by way of expediting charges, air freight charges, etc..
• Though there was a bidders list in electronic form, discipline in following the bidders list was lacking. Buyers used to send RFQs to non- standard vendors resulting in an increase in vendors. In one particular instance, the same MR was forwarded to 2 buyers by mistake and both got quotes from 2 exclusive set of vendors and there was a 20% price difference between the lowest price of the two buyers. Fortunately, this did not result in duplicate ordering.
• It was very difficult to train new staff as there was no uniform procedure being followed.
• Expediting of orders was a nightmare as there was no electronic tracking of deliveries.
• We did not have a good idea of our spend analysis.

Overall, the department was suffering from a negative image though the team was putting in a lot of hard work

The Solution:

When asked what steps he had identified that had to be made to resolve the problem, Rakesh goes on to say,

The first step we took as a team was to create a data base consolidating all the good current suppliers and linked them to material categories. Then we decided that we should adopt a system which can electronically track Material Requests through RFQs to Purchase Orders to Deliveries.

We looked at 3 other solutions before we decided on Mikrofax.

The reasons we chose the Mikrofax eProcurement Solution was,

* Mikrofax is a web based solution
* Mikrofax was very user friendly and had all the features we were looking for. In fact, we did not spend a single dollar on training. All training of staff was hands-on, during the 3 month paid trial period.
* Mikrofax staff were very flexible and supportive and were quick to understand our requirements and provide practical cost effective solutions
* Mikrofax provided several options for cost codes and we could get very useful reports on our spend
* Mikrofax provided a simple multi-company feature which was imperative in our case, as we have several group companies/projects.
* Mikrofax had a work flow with an Outlook interface.
* Very cost effective

In fact the best thing we liked about Mikrofax was the option to have a paid trial and we made full use of the trial period. In fact, we uploaded our vendor database and account codes into the system during the trial and were later transferred to the live system.

We received excellent support during the trial period.

Our team was split into Buyers and Sellers and mock RFQs were created and we went through the whole procurement process. Whenever we had any issues, they were resolved almost instantaneously by the Mikrofax support team.

During the trial period, we made a wish list of features which we would like to have. This was discussed with Mikrofax through web meetings in the presence of the whole procurement team. The team was very much aware that we should restrict the customizations to a minimum. The interaction between the Crescent and Mikrofax teams resulted in some innovative solutions. E.g. We were looking for some modifications around a discount feature. This was resolved without any major customizations by providing us the ability to input negative value line in Purchase Orders without any cost impact.

We decided to opt for a customized solution hosted by Mikrofax as this was the best option suited to our requirements.

Since the system has been installed we have found post sales follow up by Mikrofax to be excellent.

The application is very user friendly and the whole team started using the system fully within a week of installing it and we went live very fast. It is worth mentioning again that we did not need to spend anything on training.

We have received excellent support from Mikrofax they have been attentive to our needs and have responded quickly and accurately and the technical support has been very good.

The system has already been very well adopted and we have not done any manual transactions since we went live. In fact there was an air of excitement in the department once the system went live!!

Key members of staff who were involved in the initial decision phase and also the ongoing management of the system were,

Rakesh Edavalath: As Supply Chain and Contracts Manager, responsible for all the procurement and contracting for the company. Heads the department and was fully aware of the challenges of procuring without an electronic system. Decided to go for a cost effective solution to solve the problems and later presented the case to the management for approval.

Subramanian Sankaran: Supply Chain Supervisor- Was assigned the task of identifying and evaluating the solutions and presenting the shortlisted solutions to the team and management. Instrumental in the successful use of the system during the trial period. His knowledge of the system was very helpful in getting the system live quickly. Acts as System Administrator, also acted as focal point for all communications with Mikrofax.

Hameed Sultan, Procurement Supervisor & Vijay Kumar, Contracts Engineer : Key members of the team who were involved in the trial and were instrumental for quick and successful adoption of the system

For more information about this implementation or others please contact Mikrofax eProcurement directly at sales@mikrofax.com

Visit us for more information at http://www.mikrofax/com

Vendor punchout scores at Mikrofax

During our product demos we are finding that many clients are not aware of what vendor punchout is ! We demo our purchasing software and during that demo we come to the punchout phase and we have to explain what it is we are showing ... once our clients then realize they see the huge benefit of applying our software to their own Enterprises and end up with a highly professional eProcurement software system !

Mikrofax are not only software developers but we are educators to !

Visit our web site for more information http://www.mikrofax.com

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