News
Meet Professional Advantage and XMPro – the process improvement specialists – at the Gartner Symposium ITxpo Summit 2011
14th-17th November 2011 – Gold Coast Convention & Exhibition Centre
Professional Advantage will be joining XMPro at the Gartner Symposium ITxpo Summit 2011 in November on the Gold Coast. XMPro Pty Ltd is again sponsoring a Gartner event and will be showcasing its end to end BPM solution and demonstrating its product compatibility on all platforms. There was a great response from delegates at the Gartner BPM Summit in August. Professional Advantage’s BPM experts will be with XMPro again, so please come and see us at the XMPro stand. Discounted tickets are available when you book a meeting with PA or XMPro at the summit, so for your discount code contact us at bpm_info@pa.com.au
For more information on XMPro and PA’s business process management solution click here.
For more information about the Gartner Symposium ITxpo Summit 2011: http://www.gartner.com/au/symposium
Meet Professional Advantage and XMPro – the process improvement specialists – at the Gartner BPM Summit 2011
8th-9th August 2011 – Sydney Convention & Exhibition Centre
Professional Advantage will be joining XMPro at the Gartner Business Process Management Summit 2011 in August in Sydney. XMPro Pty Ltd is a sponsor and will be showcasing its end to end BPM solution and highlight its product compatibility on all platforms. Professional Advantage will be supporting XMPro at this event and attending, so please come and see us at the XMPro stand. If you schedule a meeting with PA or XMPro at the summit, you can save on your ticket. For more details, contact us at bpm_info@pa.com.au.
For more information on XMPro and PA’s business process management solution click here.
For more information about the Gartner BPM Summit 2011 click here.
Professional Advantage at AHRI HR Conference 2011
June 2011
Professional Advantage exhibited at the recent AHRI National HR Convention in Sydney and it was great to see some of our clients there and meet some more people working in Human Resources and Occupational Health & Safety. Hot topics of the conference were employee onboarding, OH&S incident management and improving HR processes.
Professional Advantage works with HR professionals to improve employee-related processes such as recruitment, onboarding, training, revenue leakage, workplace health& safety and employee risk management. We can help you achieve measurable benefits in short timeframes.
Professional Advantage and XMPro enables "Safety First, Zero Harm" for Serco Sodexo Defence Services
March 2011
Serco Sodexo Defence Services (SSDS) is a facilities management organisation with over 3,000 employees delivering soft and hard services to third parties in a highly regulated framework. Professional Advantage has already provided SSDS some great outcomes leveraging XMPro to delivering incident and hazard management, one aspect of the ‘Safety First, Zero Harm’ requirement within the business. In fact, the client estimates with the automation of reporting of incidents, the new process has increased efficiency by at least 25%.
As a next step SSDS wanted to broaden the scope and make the biggest organisational impact in the shortest time. By addressing the process of risk management and reporting across the organisation it did exactly that. Professional Advantage provided a framework for setting goals and KPIs, assigning responsible owners, collecting performance metrics and vitally, providing evidence. Users can access a range of reports, from the CEO’s dashboard to the business portal where every employee can see the results. XMPro is now seen as a key enabler for SSDS 'Safety First, Zero Harm’.
Professional Advantage delivers massive efficiencies for Australian National Maritime Museum
March 2011
As part of Australian National Maritime Museum’s strategy to bring about productivity improvements across the organisation from leveraging new technologies, Professional Advantage has delivered its XMPro Credit Card Management process.
In terms of benefits it has enabled Australian National Maritime Museum to:
- deliver a paperless process
- deliver efficiencies in comparison to the old world spreadsheet and Credit Card PDF circulating by email
- ensure against coding and validation issues, validating and posting seamlessly with Infor SunSystems
- guarantee the timely processing and bill payment and recording of the expense commitments
- provide visibility to card holder, approver and finance, where are approvals at and with whom
- remove manual keying and double handling.
There is also the opportunity to make more gains as it’s deployed to other areas of the business.
The time saved is estimated to be 80 to 90% by implementing Professional Advantage’s solution.
Professional Advantage receives 2010 XMPro Partner Award
February 2011
Professional Advantage is delighted to receive the 2010 XMPro Partner Achievement Award for Australia & the United Kingdom.
This award recognises the outstanding work that XMPro partners have performed in the areas of sales, business process automation, as well as customer satisfaction and support. Joint Managing Director Steve Howcroft said, “Along with our personal expertise and other valuable solutions, XMPro is one of the major tools that we use to help our clients enhance and optimise their business execution.”
Pieter van Schalkwyk, director of XMPro said, “XMPro is pleased to recognise Professional Advantage for its success in helping customers improve business operations and implement our software in new and innovative ways.”
Professional Advantage and XMPro deliver AFE certainty for JKX Oil & Gas
February 2011
Professional Advantage has delivered some great benefits to JKX Oil & Gas, an UK FTSE 250 exploration and production company. JKX Oil & Gas has a diverse geographic spread of undertakings, including joint ventures and spanning multiple accounting and tax jurisdictions.
A vital lever for the business is the management of the Authorisation for Expenditure (AFE) process; a primary control in the Oil & Gas sector with significant commercial implications. JKX Oil & Gas wanted to move from a manual and time consuming approach reliant on email and spreadsheets, to an electronic process with tight integration to its critical business systems. Professional Advantage and XMPro provided the solution on budget and within a very tight schedule. What appealed to JKX Oil & Gas was XMPro’s ability to address its AFE needs but also address other process issues in the business in the continued push for business improvement.
The new AFE electronic process manages all the touch points across its budget holders and approvers and integrates results back to existing business systems. It has provided a consistent standard across the business. Justification details, linkages to operating agreements, to budgets and budget owners are all enforced adding vital integrity, eliminating delays and providing certainty on progress and ultimately accountability. XMOutlook and XMWeb has also delivered immediate accessibility to a highly mobile workforce.
New Global XMPro Client - International SOS (Singapore)
February 2011
International SOS Singapore, the medical assistance company, has just completed their first XMPro business process management project with Professional Advantage.
International SOS in Singapore currently has a major internal project setting up a global shared services environment, based in Singapore. This project represents a major process and cultural change and the Shared Services Team was driven to ensure they were successful in meeting their stakeholders’ expectations and get buy in.
The first step was to centralise key financial processes to Singapore. For this to be successful they needed a way to channel requests to the Shared Services Team, via an approver. Visibility was critical to them.
They selected XMPro as the strategic tool fundamental to the success of the shared services operation. The first process addressed was a request process. The request originator, the approver and the assigned person to complete the task could be located in different offices, in different countries. Visibility at each stage the process was essential to the request originator.
The client’s drivers were around visibility, rather than complexity in rules or integration, although their approval matrix did come with some detailed requirements, and XMPro gave them the solution they needed.
Professional Advantage managed a rapid, lean project for International SOS Singapore with a successful outcome.
Professional Advantage and XMPro deliver master data management for Walker Corporation
December 2010
Walker Corporation is a leading developer in masterplanned residential retail, commercial and industrial developments. Professional Advantage have successfully implemented an XMPro supplier 'master data management' solution which manages and synchronises updates across financial systems, construction project management and property management systems.
Process oriented thinking turned the solution on its head with the realisation that typical data interfaces were not the key and that poor data was a sign of poor process. The solution delivers visibility, compliance and control and solves a big business pain that was consuming time and effort.
Helping Recreational Services deliver services its clients “cannot do without”
December 2010
Recreational Services provide specialist management and maintenance of parks, turf and facilities across New Zealand. Management and maintenance includes soft and hard assets on behalf of clients, predominately councils. The asset value maintained is approximately NZ$1 billion. Business processes run across Recreational Services, council systems and other stakeholders. Recreational Services were seeking innovative ways to deliver and expand service delivery. Recreational Services engaged Professional Advantage to help shape and define the scope for its ‘discovery’ project, to deliver a new core operational solution providing a competitive and leading edge. The project supports Recreational Service’s customer service management, including contract, asset, regime and audit management. Using road mapping and other Professional Advantage techniques, Professional Advantage successfully facilitated board and senior management workshops to define a vision, objectives, scope and priorities to design a solution clients “cannot do without”. The recommendation and resulting report was very well received and has formed the basis for Recreational Services taking an informed next step.
Helping Recreational Services ultimate goal to deliver excellence in all areas of business
December 2010
Congratulations to Professional Advantage client, Recreational Services, on receiving a NZ Business Achievement Award. The award recognises international best practice. Recreational Services has also been announced as a finalist in the JRA Best Workplaces Awards 2010. Critical to delivering on the vision of excellence in all areas of their business was finding the right partner and technology in Professional Advantage and most significantly our business process management (BPM) solution. This solution has become the place for delivering one business improvement after another, addressing business issue after business issue, both administrative and operational, in a consistent way. To date business processes addressed by the project include management of jobs, suppliers, customers, employees, time, assets as well as requests for employee leave, service and uniform. The BPM solution implemented by Professional Advantage also includes intelligent navigation of its policy and procedure site, business goals, KPI process management and resulting performance dashboards.
To accelerate the increasing benefits Recreational Services have now invested in a new internal resource to help them on this high-return journey.
Serco Sodexo Defence Services addresses critical HR processes with Professional Advantage
November 2010
Serco Sodexo Defence Services have successfully deployed XMPro to another critical shared service within the organisation, human resource management. This time working with their HR team, Professional Advantage delivered a position-to-hire recruitment process. This process starts at termination, steps through recruiting for refilling that position and finishes with onboarding the new staff member, and includes blackberry mobile approvals. At any one point Serco Sodexo Defence Services have 100 positions they are recruiting for. XMPro again serves as the key enabler to link this diverse organisation together to deliver streamlined efficiency and critical visibility between HR and Operations departments, between and between management and staff.
Micro Focus purchase Professional Advantage’s new phone mobility capability
November 2010
Micro Focus provides innovative software that allows companies to develop, test, deploy, assess and modernise business-critical enterprise applications.
Micro Focus have purchased Professional Advantage’s new iPOS phone mobility capability which comprises the iPOS and iPOS Analytics web-based procurement solutions together with the XMPro Business Process Management solution.
Czarnikow integrate systems with Professional Advantage and Touchstone Computers
November 2010
Czarnikow is one of the most respected names in their market, agricultural commodity trading.
Professional Advantage is providing a solution, in partnership with Touchstone, which links together SharePoint, Allegro Trading System, Infor FMS SunSystems, Microsoft CRM and XMPro Business Process Management solution.
Otto Energy adopt 'Workflow for SunSystems' to further improve their Infor FMS SunSystems project
September 2010
Otto Energy, an Oil & Gas company located in Perth, has implemented Workflow for SunSystems, a Business Process Management solution from Professional Advantage.
This solution will enable compliance and consistency around their AFE (Authorisation for Expenditure) processes.
Motor Accidents Authority of NSW implement Professional Advantage's business process management solution
August 2010
Motor Accidents Authotity of NSW have completed an implementation of Professional Advantage's business process management solution. Motor Accidents Authority now use our business process management solution for their supplier creation process, and will continue to further utilise the solution to manage more business processes.
Professional Advantage UK Ltd announces partnership with ThinkTree to enable organisations to achieve control and compliance of their business processes
February 2010
A new business relationship has been formed to launch a Workflow solution for CODA users, bringing together two leading solutions, CODA Financial Management Software and XMPro Business Processes Management Software (BPM).
Professional Advantage (PA), an IT solution provider and expert in the implementation of Business Process Management (BPM), announces a new partnership with ThinkTree, an independent consulting firm specialising in Finance and Business Intelligence solutions.
Joe Taylor, Founder of ThinkTree comments, “A comprehensive workflow solution for CODA users is something we at ThinkTree have really wanted to pursue for some time. Working with PA has been really exciting, as together we’ve been able to bring that solution to the table very quickly. Together, we can not only tackle a range of common financial process issues out of the box, but we also have a deeper capability for broader process automation involving any system.”
Andrew Parsons, Country Manager of Professional Advantage said "I am very enthused about the opportunity that our new partnership with ThinkTree brings to Professional Advantage. I firmly believe that combining our extensive experience of process oriented software and FMS deployment, will allow us to present a powerful BPM oriented solution to the Coda user base across the UK."
Parsons continues to say "I was impressed with ThinkTree's agile approach to business as well as their vision of a world class workflow ability closely integrated to Coda, making them the ideal partner. The XMPro BPM solution offers a simple out of the box resolution to some of the most common problems in reference data management, whilst having the scalability to address automated process management across the broader organisation. I look forward to a very exciting year with ThinkTree."
The XMPro Workflow solution for CODA users provides organisations with a strategic platform for systematically addressing business process pains, improving service delivery and providing a scalable adaptive platform for growth.
XMPro also includes a portfolio of pre built template processes that can be implemented "as is". Each template adds business control and certainty to key processes that manage the vital data in CODA FMS, such as request and approval of new Supplier and Customer details, updating Bank details and maintaining analysis data.
It enables orgainsations to apply business rules that define how things “should be done”. XMPro provides consistency and certainty by implementing approved process rules across the workforce in a user friendly way. It provides business processes with structure, compliance and auditability providing organisations with information to make timely informative decisions whilst saving on administrative cost and time. It provides one path of certainty on repeatable basis.
XMPro contains a bundle of web enabled self administration processes that handle activities such as reassigning tasks and maintain process roles. These extend participation to non finance staff and those without CODA FMS access.
The solution is also extensible. Not only can you modify existing templates but you can add completely new processes within its framework to address other management and operational challenges throughout the organisation. XMPro has all the flexibility and control necessary to rapidly extend or plug gaps between any of your existing systems.
To learn more about the XMPro Workflow solution click here
About Professional Advantage
Professional Advantage (PA), founded in 1989, is built on years of experience and extensive knowledge in business technology as both a software author and implementation provider. This has allowed Professional Advantage to deliver specialist solutions that help companies achieve quantifiable benefits. PA’s states, “We apply smart people, rigorous thinking and quality systems to business challenges”. Their large customer base and numerous awards indicate their ability to deliver solutions on time and on budget with the ultimate focus on the value of their projects to the customers. To learn more visit www.profad.co.uk.
About ThinkTree
ThinkTree is an independent consulting firm specialising in Finance and Business Intelligence solutions. The ThinkTree team has skills in the mechanics of operating businesses and the IT that supports and informs them. They have particular expertise in CODA Financials, COGNOS & Microsoft SQL Server. To learn more visit www.thinktree.co.uk.
Recreation Turf Services select PA's business process management solution
December 2009
Recreational Turf Services provide specialist management and maintenance of parks, turf and facilities across New Zealand. They have identified effective process management as a necessary tool to help gain a competitive edge in their industry, and so have chosen the business process management solution from Professional Advantage to help deliver this.
"Enterprises can experience as much as a 20% cost saving within first year of using BPM to improve business processes." (Gartner)
October 2009
“Enterprises can experience as much as a 20% cost savings within first year of using BPM to improve business processes.” (Gartner)
XMPro, a Business Process Management (BPM) suite, has helped many organisations achieve cost savings in areas such as compliance, consistency, increased productivity and transparency through the orchestration and automation of their business processes.
In recent months some of our BPM clients have:
- Better managed their assets to avoid additional capital investment.
- Improved their employee on-boarding to achieve a quicker time to revenue.
- Addressed their systems’ master data management for audit and control purposes.
- Extended their Microsoft SharePoint footprint across complex business processes.
Click here to read more on the Gartner report.
Professional Advantage has been helping organisations improve how they manage their business since 1987. We apply rigorous thinking and quality systems to business challenges. For more information on XMPro and Professional Advantage please visit www.pa.com.au/business-process-management or contact us right now at bpm_sales@pa.com.au
Professional Advantage and SunGard address the big issue of tax compliance
September 2009
Professional Advantage assisted SunGard USA in automating its sales tax computations for the thousands of sales invoices it raises each month.
SunGard implemented the Business Process Management Suite to sit alongside its billing systems and, to seamlessly, externally validate addresses and return tax rates via ADP’s Taxware service.
SunGard is one of the world’s leading software and IT services companies. They serve more than 25,000 customers in over 70 countries, including the world’s 25 largest financial services companies. With annual revenue exceeding $5 billion, SunGard is ranked 435 on the Fortune 500 and is the largest privately held business software and services company on the Forbes list of private businesses.
www.sungard.com
Plus Dane Group
London, UK - July 2009
As part of their good governance and process improvement initiatives, Plus Dane Group has selected Professional Advantage to address their budgetary control, supplier invoice management and delegated authorisation processes. The business process management suite will be able to help the group automate a wide range of manual tasks and processes over time and provide extensive visibility and auditability to their day to day activities.
Plus Dane Group has over 15,000 homes in ownership and management across Merseyside and Cheshire and offers homes across a full range of tenures, provides bespoke neighbourhood services and trades commercially to generate income, create jobs and direct wealth into their neighbourhoods.
Queensland Racing
Brisbane, Australia - May 2009
Queensland Racing Limited, the peak control body for the thoroughbred racing industry in the State of Queensland, have recently implemented PA's business process management solution and now re continued with its commitment to continual improvement by expanding the reach of this solution to more users within the organisation.
Newlon Housing Trust
London, UK - May 2009
Newlon Housing Trust partner with Professional Advantage. Newlon Housing Trust is a charitable housing association founded in Hackney in 1968 to provide decent and affordable homes for local people.
Due to rapid growth, Newlon were struggling to maintain budgetary control. Key to this decision was Professional Advantage’s flexibility and ability to customise the business process management solution to Newlon’s exact needs.
WSN Environmental Solutions
Sydney, Australia - April 2009
WSN Environmental Solutions has completed an implementation of PA's business process management solution. PA's business process management solution will automatically call and update Customer and Supplier details in their Financial Management Systems, SunSystems, eliminating double handling of data, which greatly reduces the risks of error.
Diabetes UK
London, UK - April 2009
Working with eCocoon, the PA Partner of the Year for 2008, Diabetes UK has further extended the focus of their spend control and process compliance strategy by supplementing their existing iPOS eProcurement implementation with Professional Advantage's Workflow for Infor FMS SunSystems. This project, powered by PA's business process management solution, will convert a range of manual tasks into a coordinated process management framework with seamless integration into the underlying Infor FMS SunSystems accounting system. With this common foundation in place Diabetes UK will be able to extend their process automation initiatives throughout the business.
Diabetes UK is the largest organisation in the UK working for people with diabetes, funding research, campaigning and helping people live with the condition.
Universal Cranes
Sydney, Australia - March 2009
PA's business process management solution has been implemented at Universal Cranes, one of Australia’s largest privately owned crane hire companies, to automate many processes, including employee start & exit, asset management and new plant and projects. The implementation included integration to other business systems, including Microsoft SharePoint. BPM has the ability to integrate with Document Libraries within SharePoint. “PA's business process management solution has eliminated manual procedures. Our standards and outcomes are now guaranteed”, stated Phil Dunbar, Group Financial Controller at Universal Cranes.
NSW Food Authority
Sydney, Australia - February 2009
NSW Food Authority, established to provide the best food regulation system in Australia, have implemented PA's business process management solution. “The implementation of the Customer and Supplier Request processes will now ensure that records are created uniformly and in a timely manner,” said their Professional Advantage Account Manager, Diana Singer.
Department of the Arts, Sport & Recreation
Sydney, Australia - January 2009
Department of the Arts, Sport & Recreation (DASR), together with Professional Advantage, has implemented PA's business process management solution to automate the creation of suppliers and analysis codes within their financial management system, Infor FMS SunSystems. PA's business process management solution will ensure that DASR’s policy and procedures are constantly enforced.