One of East Africa’s largest and fastest growing manufacturer of consumer products implements

OpenText Extended ECM for SAP Solution

BIDCO Africa leverages OpenText and Avaali to deploy a Document Management System and setup
content enriched SAP business processes.

Bidco Africa Ltd. is a multinational consumer goods company headquartered in Kenya with over 48
different brands and distributorships across 17 countries in the East, Central and Southern African
regions. Their products include Edible Oils, Cooking Fats, Margarine, Baking Products, Hygiene
Products, Detergents, Laundry Bars and Animal Feeds. The Group operates factories across Kenya,
Uganda, Tanzania and Madagascar. The company reaches over 350 million consumers across Africa.

Challenges

Across their business process like Accounts Receivable, payment approval, master data creation etc.,
Bidco has several challenges such as processes being manual with manual workflows, non-availability
of supporting when required during an audit, unstructured content relating to a process delinked
from SAP transactions and lack of a structured approach to document and records management.
Bidco had various business documents in the form of paper. Handling paper through the approval
process was cumbersome and it was a challenge for them to search for the relevant information in
case of any business needs. Collectively, this was leading to inefficient processes, consequent loss on
productivity, increased costs and high risks on governance and compliance.

Bidco was looking for a best of breed, comprehensive content management solution which could
automate their processes, integrate seamlessly into SAP business processes and seamless access for
its users to all the information they need at the time of executing every step in their business
process. Through this solution Bidco wanted to achieve more transparency, gain more visibility and
control of their processes. They wanted this solution to support them to deliver on their SLA’s in
their shared service center.

After exploring various options, Bidco chose to license and implement the OpenText Extended ECM
for SAP Solutions to achieve easy access to unstructured content within the context of SAP Business
Process. With this solution, they were confident that they would achieve greater productivity and
better visibility on shared services operations.

Partnering with Avaali to implement a solution efficiently and well within time:
Bidco chose to partner with Avaali for the implementation of OpenText Extended ECM for SAP
Solutions. The implementation team from Avaali conducted detailed workshops with key
stakeholders from Bidco to understand the current system and business processes, their pain points,
their requirements, and the roadmap. The workshops also covered all aspects of the proposed
solution in detail, to help Bidco appreciate how they could leverage the OpenText Extended ECM
Solutions to resolve their document management needs. The Avaali team created a detailed
blueprint document covering Extended ECM business scenarios and gained the acceptance and
confidence of Bidco business and IT team. Avaali also took ownership of educating the Bidco end
users as well as IT users, about the solution and thus eased change management.

The implementation of OpenText Extended ECM solution was split into 5 phases in order to better
suit the business as well as to ease change management. Implementation of the 1st phase of the
core OpenText Extended ECM implementation was completed in just 4.5 months. All the five phases
together with required custom developments and migration from the legacy system was delivered in
8.5 months.

Automated solution leads to significant benefits:

Bidco has integrated SAP Procurement, Sales, FI and HR business process with OpenText Extended
ECM to standardize and streamline its core business process by enriching them with document
management functionality. With this solution, they have significantly brought down their cycle time
to process and now got a greater visibility and accountability of their processes. Bidco has leveraged
OpenText Enterprise Scan solution and ECM functionality to automate their Accounts Receivable,
Bank Reconciliation, Vendor Reconciliation, Customer Reconciliation and Due Payment approval
process. With automation, Bidco has streamlined these processes and significantly reduced the cycle
time.

Avaali has implemented a solution using OpenText Extended ECM, to enable Bidco to create and
maintain SAP master data for Vendor, Customer, Material, Asset and Employee objects. This solution
has enabled Bidco to maintain high quality, accurate master data in SAP with a multi-level approval
cycle for creation of master data. By attaching the supporting documents with the master data, it is
now easy to audit in case of any issues.

Bidco has also integrated the OpenText Vendor Invoice Management with OpenText Extended ECM
Solution to digitize incoming invoices and store them in Extended ECM repository. With this
integration, Bidco is now able to access VIM invoices from Extended ECM interface and is able to
apply retention rules on those invoices. Bidco has replaced its existing document management
system and migrated those documents into Extended ECM repository. All those documents are now
stored securely and can be accessed and searched easily.

Alkane Patel, Head of IT at Bidco said ”As a result of this implementation, we have a 360-degree
visibility into any and all content associated with transactions in SAP. All our contents are now
securely stored in a centralized repository thus avoiding silos and gives us the flexibility to access our
content from different sources via preferred user interfaces. With document centric business
process workflows being implemented, we are able reduce cycle time by 50% for Due Payment
Approval process, 40% for Reconciliation process, 50% for Accounts Receivable Process, 70% for
Master Data Creation process and enabled the business and management to have better control
over the whole process and faster decisions. With Extended ECM Scan solution, Bidco is able to
digitize most of the physical documents and thus minimizing dependency on physical documents”.
Sidebar Information

Industry
FMCG

Customer
Bidco Africa Ltd.

Partner
Avaali Solutions Pvt. Ltd.

Challenges
 Minimize dependency on physical documents.
 Provide the ability to securely store documents and reference it with SAP business processes.
 Streamline Accounts Receivable, Reconciliation and Payment processes.
 Streamline master data creation process
 Reduce storage costs – storage subsystems/disks

Solutions
 OpenText™ Extended ECM for SAP Solutions

Benefits
 Quick core Extended ECM implementation in 4.5 months
 Seamless integration with SAP ERP
 Easy Access of unstructured content within context of SAP Business Processes.
 Streamlined various business process such Accounts Receivable, Reconciliation, Due
Payment, Master Data creation.
 Better Governance and Compliance

About Avaali:
Avaali Solutions (www.avaali.com) is a company that enables Enterprises to drive and deliver
business results by leveraging digital technologies. Avaali has strengths in providing Enterprise
Information Management (EIM) solutions. Avaali’s advisory, consulting and implementation services
has enabled enterprises to transform their business processes and engage better with their
stakeholders including customers, employees, partners, vendors and shareholders.

About Bidco

Bidco Africa Ltd is Kenya and East Africa’s leading manufacturer of edible oils, fats and hygiene care
products. Established in 1985 the company has manufacturing units in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania
and a footprint in 16 African countries. Bidco is home to some of Kenya’s most famous and loved
brands such as Kimbo, Elianto, Golden Fry, Chipsy, Biddy’s, Gaea, Powerboy and Gental.

To learn more about Bidco Africa visit: http://www.bidcoafrica.com