Steven Truman – Project Manager www.monash.vic.go v.au steven.truman99@g mail.com Executive Summary The accounts payables process was a purely paper based system with over 40,000 paper invoices per annum moving around the organisation with internal mail. Different business units had various methods of payment approval, and internal mail was utilised to Invoice payment was slow often took many weeks to finalise a payment; The Finance team did not know the current and forward commitments for the organisation; CASE STUDY: Accounts Automation CASE STUDY City of Monash – Victoria, City of Monash 1,100 staff, 26 locations 40,000 invoices per annum 5000 suppliers 250 delegated approvers
Executive Summary The accounts payables process was a purely paper based system with over 40,000 paper invoices per annum moving around the organisation with internal mail. Different business units had various methods of payment approval, and internal mail was utilised to
Invoice payment was slow often took many weeks to finalise a payment;
The Finance team did not know the current and forward commitments for the organisation;
The process was highly inefficient, with many touch points and double handling;
Payment of an invoice can now be made within 15 minutes, from automated collection, OCR, workflows, multiple hierarchical delegation authorities, and integration to the finance system.
Challenges Complexity of stakeholders within the business;
Vendor management (two vendors - Australia and the US);
New business processes;
Strategic Goals Investment in new technology and
streamlined business processes; Integration between systems to
provide transparency and operational efficiency;
Reduce costs – rationalisation of AP staff;
Increased productivity of AP staff; Centralisation of workflows;
Technology Landscape
Oracle eBS Finance System on HPUX 11.23
ReadSoft Scan, Verify, Interpret (OCR), and Transfer
ProcessIT workflow software using Oracle SOA and WebLogic services
Windows, Linux CentOS, and HPUX
New Business ProcessesNew business processes were introduced to the accounts payable department which included the centralisation of processing, and interacting with contract managers, line managers and strategic purchasing in different ways. While challenging to some staff, through the UAT process, training and shadowing activities, the processes are now more efficient. This led to a reduction in staff for Accounts Payable.
Stakeholder Management
CASE STUDY TITLE
City of Monash – Victoria, Australia
A Salience Model was used to for stakeholder identification and assessment of engagement. This required different groups or individuals according to their Power Urgency or Legitimacy on the project and categorized them into Core Team, dominant, dependent, dangerous, latent, demanding, discretionary or non-stakeholders. This enabled questions such as:
Power Urgency Legitimacy – Salience Descriptor What does the project need from
this group What is important to this group Potential issues or concerns, and Likely method of communication
Change ManagementA change readiness audit was conducted to identify those stakeholders that were either unaware of the project, potential resistors, neutral or supporters of the initiative. Information sharing approaches were identified for each of these groups to move them from their current view to a more knowledgeable perspective of the project.
Benefits Realisation Cost and time savings through improved business
processes; Reduction in staff required in Accounts Payable; Purchase orders now make up 90% of all
procurement; Increased transparency and accountability;
CASE STUDY TITLE
City of Monash – Victoria, Australia
Automated matching of invoices to purchase orders requires no intervention by AP staff, who now works on an exception workflow;
Present and forward commitments of the organisation are understood;
Archiving of images moved to a document management platform.
