Geodis Emerges Victorious at CIPS Awards Building a Cohesive Environment and Positive Relationships

An overarching work process mapping for the receipt of PO from customers to end-of-service payment (End-to-End (E2E) Process) was not created. Without a clear process map, higher chances for misunderstandings of the proper sequence of tasks and handover stages are there, which can lead to inefficiencies. Mapping the overall value chain processes together was the first step needed towards improving the Days Sales Outstanding (DSO) in Geodis Supply Chain Optimization (APAC), followed by identifying link points and gaps to propose areas for improvements.

Geodis SCO’s Procurement Process Excellence (PE) team approached this project and went on to create an optimized overall work process map by collaborating with other departments with Strategic Sourcing Tools and Value Chain Mapping & Analysis. This yielded visibility of overall process improvements to Finance and Operations team members. This clarity led to the streamlining of several processes, and automation adoption possibilities were considered to reduce the DSO. Thus, leading towards to an even better credibility to customers.

From left to right: Ravindran Harikrishnasamy, Juhana Alias, Choy Li Huey, Lim Ser Inn, Sewon Park, June Tang, Shivakumar Deshinamorthy and Terence Lee.

The Problem

DSO is used as a key metric for managing cash generation, and reflects the accuracy and speed of invoicing. DSO could be further lowered, by continuous improvements. Several departments within Geodis SCO were yet to fully optimise their collaborations on billing and validating cycles. Cross-functional knowledge could also be increased amongst the various teams, and understanding of each country’s internal processes was challenging as there were limited integrated platforms across the cities. These led to many touchpoints between operations and billing teams. These were identified as possible areas to improve as these can impact timelines for customer deliveries.

The intention to enhance the data accuracy and governance was also identified, to minimise incomplete or billing-errors, which can eventually impact customer satisfaction.

The Approach

Procurement’s Process Excellence (PE) team led the inter-department collaborative project, comprising members from Finance (Billing), Finance (Validation), Operations, Procurement Category team, Legal team, IT team, suppliers and stakeholder roles were assigned within each team. On top of using the PDCA tool, the Project Flow Map & Project Charter Table were also utilised to commence the project. Clear strategies were set, and aligned with key stakeholders to support and champion the project, using tools such as the Stakeholder Engagement Matrix.

The PE team proceeded to streamline sub-processes, stitching together each department’s involvement from the beginning to the end, and optimised using IT Tools, such as Microsoft Flow (now known as Microsoft Power Automate) and incorporated information depository functionality and sourcing of data from inhouse platform GeoSource into the processes. With the reformed process flows now created, collaborative engagements with the departments were held to gather feedback to get a sensing of how closely processes are followed on the ground.

One key intended capability was to ensure suppliers could be onboarded anytime as and when they become available to provide their services, and that any new automated process was amply feasible for this functionality. Plus, current requirements stipulated that compliance documents ( e.g. Non Disclosure Agreements) Due and other necessary documentation relating to suppliers were provided to Geodis in a timely manner by the suppliers.

Overcoming the Challenges

The PE team had to collaborate with relevant staff members across several countries to gather data and workflows for documentation and communication. Each country’s team had differing workflows, which may not be familiar to other teams in other cities. Also, it was important to bring about more transparency between teams on how their work is performed. As part of the project, each project team member was given clear roles and timelines, and timely automated reminders given to the members at various points of the project, to keep everyone on task. There was also the human touch of speaking to these members whenever they faced challenges to keep to the timelines. Each member had the responsibility to learn their team’s processes and articulate it to other project team members, so that best practices can be shared, and improvements can be discussed.

Progress status was transparent amongst the members, utilising dashboards to indicate progress, thus allowing for more timely, effective communication and collaboration.

Every country provided with their own sub-workflows, and any lack of transparency across countries was made lesser with the streamlining of the process. A clear plan was forged using strategic sourcing stages 1 & 2 (such as Communication & Engagement Plan).

The Results

In their E2E “To-Be” process flow for providing advisory for operations & finance workstreams, PE team clearly identified areas for automation, such as the use of Office 365 FORM’s workflows to archive correspondence and related documents, as well as identifying and eliminating duplicated tasks. Supplier communications were managed via their Microsoft SharePoint List for better traceability, ensuring business continuity even in the event that employees are absent.

For some of finance’s steps, RPA was proposed as the best supplemental tool for manual checking. Vendors, as well as Customer representatives, were encouraged to communicate via FORMS , which would trigger an email with the full content of the details to the respective role owners. These documents trails will be traceable and stored for future references, if necessary.

The Learning Points

For effective change to happen, the PE team looked at these 3 elements: Platform, Process, and People.

Choosing the right platform was key for members to perform their roles well. With a convenient overview of the E2E mapping of all relevant processes, areas of improvement can easily be pointed out. Presenting the streamlining of work processes acts as a baseline for further enhancement to occur, such as better automation tools get added over time to replace older / less effective ones. Team members would become more acquainted with RPA and automated flows, and relevant departments can provide further inhouse training available for upskilling themselves in these skillsets.

As with human behaviour, there were some resistance to change initially, but with the right management team speaking to their members on the benefits of the complete process mapping project for E2E visibility, and with gentle persuasion to upskill progressively with peer to peer supervision, there was more acceptance of the new streamlined processes. These enhancements showcased to all stakeholders how improvements can lead to value increase through better efficiency and time savings.

Overall, Procurement and all collaborating teams across all levels became more accountable of their work processes and were able to appreciate how their timely & accurate actions within the E2E impacted positively on the timeline and service levels for all stakeholders. There was also a much more enhanced understanding of each other’s connected processes, thus creating a cohesive environment of a positive relationship with all members, where any issues can resolved amicably.

Congratulations Geodis Supply Chain Optimization for clinching the Best Collaborative Teamwork Project at CIPS Asia Excellence in Procurement Awards 2023!