02.

Challenge

Aimed by the wish to have a centralized management of contracts and to streamline the activity within the organization, S.C. Electrica S.A. representatives decided to implement a contract administration solution, designed so that it can meet all the requirements then existent in the organization.

S.C. Electrica S.A. main objective as a result of this approach was to implement an integrated informatics system for electronic record, contracts and associated documents management, in order to provide protection against the risks associated with documents management on physical format, to streamline employees activities both on customers and business partners relationships, in order to ensure quickly relevant information to decision making processes with impact over the entire organization by:

• Managing a single register of contracts within the organization in order to manage centralized, contracts and associated documents;
• Ensuring copies of physical contracts that can be used as back-up in case of a disaster (loss/damage of the original);
• Data security and access to information storage in the contract administration solution, on authorization levels;
• Acquiring fast access to documents, and their rapid transfer between users and providing informational support in order to make informed decisions;
• Defining events of interest for unique or recurrent contracts (for example: expiring contracts or other clauses, payments, deliveries resulting from contracts or additional documents etc).

As a result of increased confidence in the solutions offered by Star Storage, trust granted in previous collaborations, Contracts Administration solution, has occurred naturally in the discussions between S.C. Electrica S.A. and Star Storage, finalized with the completion of a partnership to implement this solution in Star Storage Cloud, the most secure Data Center in Romania.

An additional requirement was to implement Contracts Administration solution on the computerized archiving system platform offered also by Star Storage, already existent on S.C. Electrica S.A., and to integrate Contracts Administration solution with this platform, in order to use all the management functionalities of the document, on enterprise level (search, versioning, document viewer on access base etc.).

For mobility and guaranteed availability based on a strict SLA, this solution would be hosted in Star Storage Data Center, equipped with the latest technologies, so that users can access the application through the web browser, using a VPN secured connection, in Electrica’s intranet network.

04.

Benefits

Contracts Administration solution offers the possibility of introducing contracts and additional documents in electronic format, through the capture application and through the contracts application interface. Thus, users, obtain a complete, centralized image, of all contracts and related documents within the organization, while being more efficient in their daily activities workflows.

A serious problem in S.C. Electrica S.A. was the lack of a unique reference list of all contracts, in order to allow consistent, centralized management of the existing documents, without double or cancel registration assigned numbers over the time, problem solved by implementing the solution offered by Star Storage.Using a unique reference list of contracts within Contracts Administration solution, S.C. Electrica S.A. benefit of a single range of numbers for all departments within the company, with a unique location, automatically managed by the application, without the need for human intervention in their management.

Because in any organization the confidentiality is essential, Star Storage specialists have provided within Contracts Administration solution, mechanisms that secures access to information, depending on the document type and users role (management, coordinator, system administrator, etc.). Thus, access to information in the documents is performed restricted, based on credentials, user having rights on the basis of roles that allows tight control and clearer evidence of actions taken by them within Contracts Administration solution.Quick access to managed information was assured through the existence within the application of automatic links set between contracts and associated documents, on metadata basis, introduced by users.

This way, the Contracts Administration solution offers users functionalities such us, advanced search and retrieval of information, which quickly provides powerful and relevant decision support.For a better management and synchronization of actions in a contract management, Star Storage solution has been provided with a contractual event notification section. By using this section, S.C. Electrica S.A. users were able to setup, depending on the specific of each contract and associated document, various notifications with automatic sending by email. In this way, users were automatically notified, in time, by the application, that they must perform an action (for example: renewal, contract renegotiation, payments, delivery or many others), which allowed them to perform, tangible actions with measurable results. „The functionality of visualizing the working agenda by aggregating all events of interest in the contract, allowed S.C. Electrica S.A employees to have a better organization of activities by quickly see associated events to a contract, such as renewal of a contract, payments and others, ensuring this way easy access to the contract file including its updated financial picture.“ said Cristinel Barbulescu, IT Director SC Electrica S. A.Star Storage Contracts Administration solution was equipped with functionalities that allow users to have at their disposal information regarding the contract file automatically updated with information from invoices, contracts and associated documents, so that they can achieve complex reports, useful in making decisions regarding the profitability of a contract.

Therefore, S.C. Electrica S.A. users, have the information available up to date, without wasting time to search data needed in the associated documents, invoices and other related documents.

In addition to above, the Contracts Administration solutions offered and implemented by Star Storage within S.C. Electrica S.A. allows:

• The possibility of versioning contracts and associated documents, enabling traceability and offering the possibility to follow up documents to their final version;
• Minimize paper work and the risk of losing contracts through centralized administration in electronic format and by reducing human interaction in making these actions;
• Use templates in order to generate new contracts automatically, thereby considerably reducing the time allocated in the past to achieve them;
• Automatic calculation of contract value in multiple currencies and reference classes, providing real-time reports, which makes important decisions within the company.

„The solution implemented by Star Storage team, currently represents for S.C. Electrica S.A. a unique point of information on contracts, at company level, allowing contract monitoring, terms and associated documents. Thus, we can talk about a significant improvement to access documents and to transfer these information between users, so they can work efficiently in a collaborative environment, shortening the time to take decisions, thing that lead to an increase capacity of reaction both with business partners and the relationship with our customers.” said Cristinel Barbulescu, IT Manager S.C. Electrica S.A..

Contracts Administration solution offered by Star Storage, once implemented within S.C. Electrica S.A. managed to reduce significantly the costs allocated to work with paper documents, streamlining company and users activities.

With Contracts Administration solution offered by Star Storage, organizations can efficiently manage all the contracts and associated documents, can take advantage of using dynamically the informations contained, and also many other advantages offered by this solution, including those obtained by S.C. Electrica S.A.