SriLankan Airlines transforms procurement process with Oracle solutions

Monday, 11 August 2014 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

SriLankan Airlines (SLA), the nation’s award winning national airline, has successfully deployed Oracle iProcurement to streamline employee ordering while enforcing a companywide approved purchasing policy in order to slash procurement cost. Prior to deployment of Oracle iProcurement, a module of Oracle E-Business Suite R12, SLA was facing challenges to ensure end-to-end work flow as requisitions from user departments were being handled manually and there were no automated budgeting controls and restrictions. They also faced the issue of multiple layers of employees taking care of requisition handling, inventory management and stock issues. Oracle iProcurement enabled SLA to standardise procurement process throughout the company resulting in productivity gain and cost savings by tracking companywide usage and expenses.

“With Oracle as a key enabler for SriLankan Airlines, we have been enjoying the benefits of an automated and flexible business platform for a number of years. This has helped us to increase our efficiencies and establish a solid foundation as we redesigned a number of our core business processes,” said SriLankan Airlines Head of Information Technology Chamara Perera. “Successful deployment of Oracle iProcurement across departments has automated paper based manual workflows and enabled our business users with industry standard rich functionalities that make efficient procurement choices while cutting unnecessary costs and time.”

Oracle Consulting Service (OCS), in conjunction with the team at SriLankan Airlines, helped with the implementation process. They provided technical assistance, guidance and training for the project along with 24X7 support to SLA. OCS, with its deep expertise in Oracle products, has the ability to help organisation with architecture, planning, implementation, upgrade, migration, and expert services across the Oracle stack. With Oracle E-Business Suite, the airline benefited from automation of its requisition process, real-time online stock update after shipping confirmation, and the ability to control approval and assign cost to specific department. “Oracle E-Business Suite enables procurement professionals to share unified information across the enterprise and make smarter decisions using correct real-time information,” said Country Director Application Business, Sri Lanka and Maldives Chandita Samaranayake. “By implementing Oracle iProcurement, Sri Lankan Airlines can standardise and simplify procurement processes across departments. This eliminates the lengthy and cumbersome manual requisition processes while enhancing the productivity of procurement staff therefore enabling them to focus on supplier relationships and strategic sourcing.” SLA’s management now has a bird’s-eye view of the procurement process providing the approver with access to all details regarding the requisition and with provision to make appropriate changes to the requisition to help reduce cost. The system also provides added feature of forwarding the requisition for additional approval or seek additional information. SLA awarded the contract to Oracle in September of 2013 and the solution went live in April of 2014.