Interview with Hana Ježkova, Manager of dpt. of SAP Development and application support of the construction, Letiště Praha, a.s. (Airport Prague)
Airport Prague maintains 17.000 active contracts and new contracts are coming every day. Airport Prague broadened mib:CLM (MIBCON solution of Contract Lifecycle Management System) with additional processes related to the contract handling.
What contract management solution did you use before mib:CLM?
We had a small out of the box SW solution that was originally intended purely for workflow management.
What was the brake point in which you started to look for something new?
After three or four years of operation of the original solution. More and more processes were wrapping up on the solution, exceptions to the processes. It has become an awfully big agenda. Service requirements were constantly increasing. The user got lost somewhere, he needed to edit the data, he sent the workflow by mistake somewhere where he should not have sent it… We, at IT department, were overwhelmed by service requests. The original out of the box solution required 2 FTE (Full Time Equivalent) for operation support of the solution only without any development tasks. The original plan was to have only 0,5 of FTE for the operation support of the solution.
Have you considered other solutions besides mib:CLM?
Yes, about a year before the implementation of mib:CLM, we considered a solution directly from SAP, and then SAP brought us a third party with its own solution and ready-made interface. None of this suited us, either financially or in terms of our functionality requirements. And coincidentally, when I stopped looking for something new and reconciled with further investments in our original application, Mr. Vácha (the author of the mib solution:CLM) and me were working on something else, and he mentioned to me that he was preparing a new product.
What attracted you to the product?
From the ICT point of view, mib:CLM fitted to our needs. At the same time, users did not want to download the document outside the system and then upload it again. The big advantage of CLM is the integrated word control. This was one of the key points that convinced both users and our management.
The implementation went smoothly?
Within the blueprint concept, it ran smoothly. In addition, we have added processes that were not originally required and that precede the conclusion of the contract - investment plans and tenders. Implementation began in March 2018. In September 2018 we launched investment requests, in November 2018 requests to our central purchasing and tenders, in February 2019 contracts.
Who did you involve in the team within the company?
Central purchasing, lawyers, compliance department, controlling department, which deals mainly with the investment process, but also the payment system department, taxpayers and the economy, ie also finance.
How do you evaluate the functioning of mib:CLM after a year?
The application is useful, good, strict in terms of process auditability. One sees in the application only what is to be approved, no one intervenes in it, does not change the document under the other person hands due to additional modifications, does not add additional comments. This was the case in the previous solution, and some users initially missed it. But when users get used to it, and after some partial modifications according to their wishes, there occur very few requests for data changes. Users already know that they have to wait in the workflow for their turn in the process flow, and afterwards they have plenty of options for correcting their user error without IT intervention. In terms of process point of view, it's better.
So what is the biggest benefit of mib:CLM for you?
The system is transparent to the user, he knows where he is in the system, how much time he has to process the requirement, comment and so on. We manage many more files and agendas with the same number of people, or with a minimum increase in capacity. The company is developing and we at mib:CLM handle many more files than before. In addition, we introduced a lot of new processes into mib:CLM from the beginning, which were not in the previous solution. Other teams also like the application, so they want to add new and new processes that are currently on SharePoint or in e-mail. We have a queue for new agendas and further expansions. The advantage is also that every employee can comment on us, everyone has an SAP employee role, a license, historically because of the payslips.
What are the processes which you added into the contract lifecycle management system?
For now, those that precede the conclusion of the contract. We have large investment projects at the airport, so we start with the investment plan, its comments, approval, followed by a request for central purchasing. The drawing of funds for investments is automatically monitored. We continue with the request for the supplier's tender and its preparation, only the tender itself is then implemented in EZAK (tendering SW application), the result is returned to mib:CLM. Then a contract is being prepared there. Some processes used to be handled by e-mail. As a result, the process in mib:CLM is now more complex and longer than contract lifecycle management alone.
What does mib:CLM look like in numbers? How many contracts and users do you have in it?
We have 26,000 contracts in it, whether revenue, cost, lease, energy contracts, just all of them. No contract can be signed outside mib:CLM. We've also migrated historical contracts in mib:CLM to enable the users to view them. We have contracts there from 1995 until today. There are 17,000 active contracts. There are 650 contracts in progress. We have currently 700 users, in the next three years we expect to expand the agenda covered by mib:CLM by additional 200 users. There are 150 users creating the new contracts. We use the mib:CLM solution within the entire Prague Airport group - in addition to Prague Airport, also the other subsidiaries - Czech Airlines Technics and Czech Airlines Handling also use the solution.
You mentioned that you have a queue for further requests. What else would you like to include in mib:CLM?
As part of mib:CLM, we have now launched Company rules documentation and we will launch the second phase of Company rules documentation, which is specifically for airports. We call this the Safety Study. Then we have the evaluation of suppliers in the queue, which we now run on SharePoint. Furthermore, colleagues within mib:CLM would like to address security changes, for which we are now doing an analysis from the point of view of information security. And then there is the management of changes in the investment management processes and, in the future, possible comments on the project documentation.
How Covid-19 changed your plans?
The plans remained the same, only due to austerity measures the implementation of the plans will spread over time.
