Godrej Properties Limited, the real estate development arm of the Godrej Group, has been using ERP for managing its complete procure-to-pay process. The company has completed several landmark projects and is currently developing significant projects in 12 cities across India.

The procure-to-pay process involved receiving invoices at multiple branches across the country, which were then sent for centralized verification and processing.

However, this process involved a number of manual steps that the ERP could not capture and address. This led to longer turnaround time for business. Also, in some cases, the physical movement of invoices was difficult to track, and resulted in lower efficiency.

“Though ERP is a great solution, it has its own challenges,” says Shailesh Joshi, CIO, Godrej Industries who also looks after IT at Godrej Properties.

Joshi explains that ERP lacks workflow and has many rigid processes. “If business is changing or it wants to make any changes in the ERP specific to a region, it becomes a tough task. Also, it does not provide an end-to-end visibility,” he says.

Several of Godrej Properties’ processes needed clarification, validation, or approvals outside the ERP system. These were performed either manually or in other legacy systems. This mix of processes created issues in end-to-end visibility and management.

Joshi had to address these limitations quickly. It was critical that he modernized the business procurement process to be competitive and drive greater efficiency.

He wanted a solution that mapped all the activities that occurred outside the system without compromising on the performance and security.

He decided to deploy a business process management (BPM) solution from Progress Software to streamline multiple business processes and improve and optimize its overall business operations.

“The role of a BPM is to complement the ERP system,” says Joshi.

Using the BPM solution, the IT team was able to automate all semi-automated processes, spanning a number of legacy systems. This resulted in real-time visibility into these processes.

The solution also helped them to manage entire supply chain network of vendors and suppliers.

“We have now integrated our vendors, partners, as well as customers on a single platform that is agile, responsive, and extremely efficient,” says Joshi.

Vendor payments that took around 40 to 45 days earlier can now be done in 15 days as the waiting time for approvals has reduced.

Soon after the first implementation phase with an easy-to-use interface that required almost no training, managers were able to quickly track the processes end-to-end, in real-time, and demonstrate significant improvement. For example, purchase order approvals that took few days earlier now happen in a matter of hours.

After the success of the procure-to-pay process, Joshi is now in the process of executing the solution for the goods received and the purchase order processes at Godrej Properties.

“We are planning to deploy this solution in our other group companies as it can also be used as a standalone process like travel booking, leave applications etc.,” says Joshi.