EQUINITI
absolutely necessary and that created value . We then centralised these processes into the team and assigned a nominated process owner with a clearly defined service level agreement ( SLA ).
“ It was important that we could measure the time and quality of each process . Depending on the complexity of the process and the capability required to run it determined whether we offshored it to our shared service centre or kept it onshore . We formed internal contracts between the teams for each process and set review sessions to hold each party to account . It ’ s very much like our own outsourcing agreement , it keeps all parties accountable for performance ,” explains Burt .
Achieving this , Burt and his team moved on to selecting the right technology to become truly digital . “ For P2P we use Workday , for contract management we selected HighQ and for supplier onboarding and supplier management we decided upon Medius . It was important that we matched our department ’ s process maturity to the functionality of the platforms . There is no point in owning a Ferrari if all you want to do is drive to the shops ,” adds Burt .
“ It was during the implementation where we maximised the automation opportunities , our ethos is always to have as little manual intervention as possible . In practice this means enabling smart forms to guide users , setting workflow rules to only flag exceptions for approval and also using scheduling and reminders to ensure activities are being completed . We also use statistical analysis to help identify where we should set our optimum manual procurement intervention points .”
Equiniti is also looking at evaluation platforms that harness emerging technologies such as Blockchain and AI , “ but I
38 January 2022