Partex Star Group is one of the largest Bangladeshi diversified private sector enterprises, owns and successfully operates more than 30 manufacturing, service, and trading concerns delivering the best values to customers through its products and services.
Challenges
They had an old paper-based approval system. The whole orderliness used to require more time and was too cluttered to manage. Additionally, they couldn’t track progress or history because there were no digital records for that system in place.
Solution
Realizing the need for a more efficient approval process, our team created Approval management system (AMS 23) that connects with their existing employee directory and manages all aspects of life cycle management.
The solution is being used by all permanent employees of Partex for the last 3 years. Users from within a company’s internal active directory can access this app without signing up separately, if they have the same username and password from active directory can be used here.
The system is set up in a way that allows for users to have different privileges depending on their role. For example, the ” Admin” has access to manage all configurations. Admin can set the role of other users (ex-admin,audit user or department admin).
As Partex has a group of companies. Companies are comprised of many departments: departments are also comprised of units. Each department needs approval in order to move forward with their work – this was previously done on paper and now it can all happen digitally. In case of approval, initiator, recommender or approver can know about the approval stage and all the details at any given time with the facility of commenting. They can also check the current state of the approval by simply logging into the portal. Employees receive email notifications anytime an approval is granted or changed in real time.
The system is easy to use and navigate. It allows for an effortless approval process because each request has a unique number, making it possible to check any sanction by their reference number without hassle or delay! The interface makes things easier on approvers as well; they just need to select the company, department and unit. The process begins with the selection of approvers and recommenders, followed by attachment for review. While reviewing, the recommender can approve or reject or let know (by comment) about any other attachments if needed. Thus, the full cycle is completed easily.
We recognize that when an employee is on leave, approvals might get stuck and important tasks can wait. The vacation rule is a great feature that helps to avoid approvals getting stuck when an employee goes on leave. One can set the leave duration and forward the user who will get the approval application/tickets in lieu of him/her.
When an employee is on leave but has not applied the vacation rule or switched jobs while some tickets are pending for their approval; there’s a feature developed: Reassign. The admin user can move these requests to other employees working instead of them.
The Audit Report option is a great and fast way to check the visibility of any selective ticket/approval. In that case, only the ticket reference number is required to know the details. But also, there are also many filtering options (ex-department, unit, initiator) to specify the ticket. While checking the details, if an admin user sees that approvals are pending, he can follow up with the certain recommenders, which fastens the whole process. Thus, the entire progress gets managed efficiently. This gives them total clarity on each step, allowing them to see what’s going on in their department or even the entire business from beginning to end.
There is a facility for getting the pdf copy of the approved application. An approved ticket can be viewed with all details and attachments; those attachments can be downloaded any time. The entire report (with all comments) is generated automatically and as a document can be saved. As pdf versions are available in the system hard copies can also be extracted. As this approval management system is an automated system there is less or no chance of human error.
Impact
PSG’s employee approval management system is used by over 3500 employees across 30 groups of companies. With over 500 approvals being processed each day, the system helps to save time and increase efficiency. This approval management system has proven a valuable tool for their business.