How to ensure compliance with regulations and default procurement procedures?
A simple solution is Scenario Manager.
Ensolva Scenario Manager is a specialized workflow for the procurement sector, that monitors the course of activities of each project in procurement! The advantage is that the business organization is not forced to change its workflow, because the Ensolva Scenario Manager adapts to existing policies and procedures.
Every business organization has internal policies and procedures that ensure efficient operation and compliance of the business company, regardless of whether it is public or private.
The big challenge is to ensure that they are respected. That is why technology-aware companies are increasingly introducing information systems for managing procedures and regulations for various business processes. Such solutions for procurement processes are rare and are owned by only a few specialized procurement management solutions.
Ensolva was among the first.
The regulations define why to do something (e.g., creating an online auction), and the procedures tell how to do something (defining the approver, the activities, and the necessary steps as a prerequisite for creating an auction). Together, these two acts represent guidelines for the company’s operations, reduce risks and set standards for measuring success.
Why it is important to define procurement policies and procedures
Procurement is without exception a particularly sensitive area in every organization. It is the one that creates and is responsible for the costs! That is why it is important to carefully define all activities, to think down to the smallest detail, with the aim that procurement is a sector that creates added value to the final products and services of your company!
Without regulations and procedures, procurement would turn into chaos. I’m not saying the company would fail, but day-to-day commitments would come down to improvisation and coping with chaos which is unfortunately a common picture in procurement.
Imagine a situation where tenders are announced at the discretion of each supplier without an agreed order and rules. The matter would very quickly get out of control and costs would be created without a plan, goal, and supervision. How long would it take to ask for additional information such as who ordered, why, with whom you agreed…
The Scenario Manager brings peace and relief to the procurement and administration
Scenario Manager is one of the unique functionalities that gives Ensolva a significant advantage over the competition. It enables users to define every step in the procurement process, even the smallest, considers different situations, ensures that the given order of activities is respected and thus ensures compliance with rules and procedures.
The advantages of the Scenario Manager were especially recognized and well used by the contracting authorities who implemented legal regulations, internal regulations and procedures and thus ensured their full compliance.
The role of Scenario Manager in procurement projects
Selecting a procurement scenario is the first step a supplier takes when starting a procurement project. Scenarios (procurement activities and their order) are different depending on procurement categories or type of procurement (information inquiry, bidding or online auctions).
According to the selected scenario, all activities on the project take place.
- The system prevents the transition from one procurement phase to another if not all conditions defined by the scenario are met. For example, it is impossible to announce a tender if the superior has not previously approved it.
- In accordance with the selected scenario on the procurement project, the persons were assigned roles (project manager, executive director, supervisor). In the further phase of the procurement project, the system itself recognizes people by roles and accordingly automatically communicates with them, informs them about the project activity or asks for their approval. For example, a job cannot be awarded after the end of the competition if the superior has not previously approved the activity.
- The Scenario Manager ensures complete transparency. For example, people assigned a role in a project can see who approved a particular activity and when.
- All project members have insight into the status of project activities.
How is your Scenario Manager created in Ensolva?
In Ensolva, it is possible to define an unlimited number of scenarios and adapt activities to types and categories of procurement. Baseline scenarios are created when implementing Ensolva in a business organization. You can always enter a new or update an existing one.
Before creating a scenario in Ensolva, define:
- A list of procurement activities and the order of their execution
- Project roles and responsibilities for the implementation of individual activities
- Required approvals
- Persons to be notified at a particular time
- Conditional branching in the process that depends on user selection
- Functionalities that are prohibited / unavailable at a particular time for a particular user
Automatic document generation
Contracting authorities are obliged to prepare different types of documents in several phases of the procurement tender. In the traditional approach, data is entered manually into existing templates prepared in MS Word or Excel. Procurement stores them in folders on different computers and then delivers them to recipients using different tools. There is no monitoring and continuity of the process in one place.
In Ensolva, records, decisions and procurement orders are created automatically at a specific time, and everything is managed by Scenario Manager.
When implementing Ensolva, we define document forms for our users. At a given time, the supplier is automatically offered the option of creating documentation that is generated with the click of a button and saved within the system. The Scenario Manager does not allow the next activity to be performed until the current one is satisfied.
Features of Ensolva Scenario Manager:
- Makes sure that the tasks and activities always reach those who are in charge of them.
- Disables skipping prescribed steps and activities.
- Ensures that superiors are aware of events at each stage of procurement.
- All project members have an insight into the status of the activity.
- It results in great time savings.
- All stakeholders in the process are calm because they don’t have to worry about a lot of tiny steps in procurement.
- It adapts to changes in internal acts.
Scenario Manager saves time
Our users, especially those from the public sector, pointed out large time savings, up to 70 percent as a great advantage of Scenario Manager. Prior to the implementation of Ensolva, they had to further check and invest more energy, effort, and time into the consistency of the implementation of procedures and regulations.
In addition, the automatic generation of official acts (records of the assigning work, records on the opening of bids, etc.) minimized the possibility of human error and significantly reduced the time of their creation and submission. Just remember the ways and how you collect the approvals of your superiors…
Time is money!
