Aselsan is a producer of electronic devices in Turkey with 3,800 employees. It was founded in 1975 and 85% of the company are owned by foundation backed by the Turkish armed forces. The presentation is given by Mr. Davut Culha.
In 2005, Aselsan tried doing workflow management in their SAP installation by programming the workflows directly in ABAP. However, it was clear to them, that they needed an enterprise level workflow tool. They started looking for a possible system with the following features:
- suitable for enterprise level processes
- easy integration of SAP and Microsoft Outlook
- browser-based interface
- support for single-sign on
- features to analyze and improve business processes
They ended up selecting webMethods BPMS from Software AG. Another important requirement was also that the provider should have an office in Turkey including a Turkish version of the user interface. I think having a native user interface is an important point to stress, because people prefer to work with a software in their native language during their day-to-day work.
It was the aim to cover all purchasing processes with webMethods BPMS. As a first business process, they implemented the process "purchasing request". This was done in less than 6 months in 2009 according to Mr. Culha. Interesting, they modeled the process using the EPC notation using ARIS. They probably already smelled at that time that both companies, Software AG and IDS Scheer, will eventually merge. In the meantime, they automated almost 10 different processes from the purchasing domain. There are still a few ongoing process implementations.
The processes are triggered by the user either from a web-based portal or directly from a SAP transaction. If a step is assigned to a user, the user receives an email with a direct link to the process step along with a short description of what needs to be done. Due to single-sign on, no additional login is required by the user after clicking on the link in the email. This makes the solution very easy to use for their users. They also put much thought into the web portal. For example, they defined like a simple style guide so that all forms look the same. For occasional analysis, they integrated webMethods BPMS with SAP business warehouse.
The project presented by Mr. Culha seems to be a big success. Before automating the purchase request process, it took 4.5 days. Today, the same process is completed in 1.5 days. That's three times faster!
Note: Check this overview post to get all links to the other live posts from ProcessWorld 2011 in Berlin
