Mobile application development, cloud technologies, web application and bespoke software development

Novartis Pharma sets high business standards. Therefore, when automating business processes, it is necessary to consider many technological constraints, such as the use of technologies and products approved by the group of companies.

The solution proposed also required the mandatory presence of the testing environment and separate development and production environment and clearly defined procedures for project execution.

In 2013, the company’s management decided to equip the field stuff with tablet PCs to increase their mobility and efficiency. In this regard, it was necessary to support the full-featured system operation both on laptops and on new devices to perform the following tasks:

• increase the efficiency of document management methods;
• improve the quality of document movement control, eliminate the loss of individual parts of the approval chain, and provide control at each level of execution;
• fasten bringing tasks to the executors;
• reduce time spent on searching for needed information;
• reduce the cost of processing documents and generating reports for specified intervals.

Digital Design solution architecture for Novartis is based on Microsoft technologies. Microsoft SQL Server is used as the Database Management System, and user interfaces are implemented in the SharePoint environment using ASP.NET. This combination of technologies provides the required effect when supporting and developing solutions. At the same time, most of the settings can be changed independently by the Novartis team.

Lot of attention is paid to verification methods, reducing the number of user errors, informing of incorrect actions, etc. It allows new employees to start working in the system faster and it significantly helps the first line of support.

The most of solutions support remote work for users being out of office, e.g. via iPad.

Since 2009, Digital Design has implemented the following solutions for Novartis Pharma:

• iContractManagement – contract documents agreement;
• iInvoicing – financial documents registration and payment tracking;
• iPreboarding – submission and processing of applications for hiring new employees;
• iFTP – for interaction with doctors as part of scientific and educational activities, covering the full cycle from contracting to payment;
• iTravel – travel requests processing.

iContractManagement

• Contract documentation agreement automation
• Contract documents archive creation
• Performance control
• 100 users working in the system
• 10,000 documents processed in 2009-2013

iInvoicing

• Maintaining database and accumulating archive of primary documents
• Calculation of the planned payment date using the payment calendar
• Tracking the payment status of incoming invoices
• Control of payment terms
• Integration with SAP
• Informing employees of the payment status

iPreboarding

• Optimization of hiring processes
• Approval of applications for registering a new employee in HR, financial, administrative, IT and other services
• Sending standard email templates as well as flexible mechanisms for changing them
• Integration with 1C and SAP HRCore

iFTP

• Creating and storing contracts with doctors
• Creating, approving and sending documents for payment as part of scientific and educational activities
• More than 500 system users, most of them work remotely using iPad
• Integration with SAP
• Full automation of interaction with doctors, from contracting to payments for completed tasks, and creating the final personal income tax report

iTravel

• Creating travel requests with preferences for tickets, accommodation, transfers, and visa processing
• Providing employees with access to system functions using iPad
• Printing a business trip order from the system with the date of electronic approval
• Built-in mechanisms for monitoring the company’s expenses and violation of the company’s business travel policy

The old Tetra Pak information management process was based on different systems used by multiple Tetra Pak branches; thus data consolidation became a difficult task. There was no possibility to adopt unified customer service practices for corporate clients. While international customers required a global approach, some of Tetra Pak branches were still using legacy systems that reinforced the functional approach.

Tetra Pak had to take account of both internal and external reasons for change as follows:

• globalization of the economy;
• commoditization of products and services;
• increased competition;
• growing information availability.

Tetra Pak also faced the following additional challenges:

• a need for working with data simultaneously across the whole enterprise;
• a need for effective access rights management.

Lack of a centralized data management system was a major issue for Tetra Pak, a large company with multiple branches. Tetra Pak’s combination of the global and local property called for a new solution to store and manage data involved in order fulfilment processes for packaging materials, technical sales and service and capital equipment. Such a system could significantly improve customer service and internal processes.

Once Tetra Pak committed to a new solution, it evaluated a number of potential development partners. Digital Design was selected to develop a pilot version and then the full version of the data management system.

Digital Design proposed to implement an Integrated Master Data Management (MDM) system, thus providing a mechanism to maintain business data, distribute the data among local Tetra Pak companies, and synchronize the data with other platforms and systems. The resulting MDM system is integrated with iScala used as en ERP solution by many of the Tetra Pak branches (see Fig. 1 below).

The Master Data Management (MDM) system shares data with Tetra Pak financial, reporting, and statistical systems. The MDM system provides full support for financial operations, with specifics as follows:

• multiple accounting and legal standards;
• logistics including sales orders and purchase orders;
• stock control and statistical analysis;
• service order management and service management;
• multi-currency and multi-site project management.

The MDM system features the following functionality:

• A common database providing access to information via a web-based user interface. Tetra Pak employees have free access to common data and exclusive access to their branch data.
• A special tool allowing to export data to iScala systems and other Online Transaction Processing systems.
• Validation, clearance, and loading of source data, including data imported from the legacy systems into Master Data Management system database.
• Role-based security model allowing to protect data and manage user rights according to user position and duties.
• Logging of all changes made by users available for viewing to Audit Administrator.
• Notification subscription allowing users to be informed instantly, once specific dataset has been modified.
• Scalability guaranteed by similar data organisation for all business objects; every new business entity is registered in the system according to predefined procedures.

The MDM system is now operating on the Global Tetra Pak Intranet and targets both all common data and data pertaining to local companies in Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Croatia. More Tetra Pak companies are scheduled to join the MDM system within the next four years.

Implementation & Setup Dates

Consistent and Accurate Data

The utilization of the centralized data storage and unified access to data has resulted in increased productivity at Tetra Pak. The MDM System’s user-friendly interface allows Tetra Pak employees to save significant amounts of time while searching for, viewing, and editing data. As the data feeds are now extremely accurate, consistent, well-structured, and sensibly categorised, the data can be analyzed much more effectively. As a result, the data now provides a reliable foundation for decision making. The Tetra Pak MDM system makes the business processes transparent and easy to manage.

Local and Global Data Access

Based on its extensive marketing and production infrastructure, Tetra Pak routinely processes information pertaining to nearly all geographical regions. Using the Tetra Pak MDM system, users centrally access both local (country-specific) and global data.

Improved Service and Increased Customer Satisfaction

Tetra Pak customer testimonials clearly state that since the introduction of the Digital Design developed solution, the process of doing business with Tetra Pak became much more streamlined and efficient. The system has enabled Tetra Pak customers to be at the center of the business process, and therefore, customer satisfaction has dramatically increased.

Four major companies represent the Baltic Beverages Holding and Digital Design team was challenged to develop and launch a corporate intranet portal aimed to keep companies connected and to enable seamless working on cross-functional projects.

Given the complexity and scope of the project and taking into account the high probability of following project scaling, the Digital Design project team has chosen Microsoft technology stack to build an intranet solution. Multiple integrations with platforms and systems which formed the consolidated IT-landscape of the Group were scheduled within the delivery stage of the project.

The corporate portal development made it possible to tackle the following tasks:

• Real-time communications and data exchange;
• Integrated booking, reservation and scheduling system for conference and meeting rooms Storage of documents and operations monitoring;
• Corporate data management.

Having multiple sites and branches across Russia led to the incremented costs and time losses on maintaining IT infrastructure. The customer intended to modernize the infrastructure and to reduce its maintenance costs.

• A pilot zone was deployed for 500 automated workstations in order to verify performance, reliability and quality of the system;
• Digital Design project team developed the detailed specification that covered all further stages of the project including prerequisite requirements, the project back-up plan, and the maintenance schedule;
• Microsoft Systems Management Server 2003 and a Service Desk System based on HP Service Desk were integrated.

• Improving quality of the IT infrastructure management and reducing the costs of its administration and operation;
• The provided technical documentation allowed the Heineken IT team to run all deployment activities in-house enabling the connection of the remaining 1,400 workstations to the system;
• Integration with MS Systems Management Server 2003 resulted in customer service response times reduction and maximazing Service Desk efficiency.