About the Company
Unipetrol is a leading group in the field of crude oil processing and petrochemistry in the Czech Republic and at the same time one of the key players in Central and Eastern Europe. In 2005, it became part of PKN Orlen – the largest refinery and petrochemical group in Central Europe.
Initial Situation of the Customer – Specification of the Assignment
Unipetrol requested IXTENT to perform a technological and functional upgrade of their existing Invoice Cockpit solution from KOFAX (formerly ReadSoft) to the latest version, including OCR components, SAP part, and WebCycle (web applications for approvers). The main reason for the upgrade was that the Invoice Cockpit version used by the customer was already outdated and no longer supported by the existing manufacturer. This posed numerous operational risks.
Solution Design
As no technological upgrade of the Invoice Cockpit solution has been performed in recent years and the customer’s version of the product was no longer supported by the original software developer, it was necessary to upgrade the existing Invoice Cockpit 3.2 SP1 to Process Director 7.7 version (i.e., to perform upgrade over 6 product versions). This upgrade meant quite a fundamental change to the existing solution. The technical part included inspection of all parts of the product in order to verify the implemented functionality (both standard and customized) of the original version against the standard functionality of the new version (a “jump” over six versions could have resulted in a sudden change in the product’s core).
IXTENT used the standard functionalities of the new version to the maximum so that the upgraded system would contain as little customized code as possible, i.e., the solution was standardized to the greatest possible extent. The new version is literally a generational change (both in terms of functionality and, most importantly, technology) of the ReadSoft solution (now KOFAX) used by Unipetrol.
IXTENT’s Solution Benefits
IXTENT proposed a solution upgrade for the customer. The solution consists of the SAP part (Kofax ReadSoft Process Director including the web application for approvers), which aims to optimize the processing of supplier invoices, and of the OCR part (Kofax ReadSoft Invoices) which provides automated data recognition and mining. Thanks to this solution, the company’s employees do not have to manually retype invoices into SAP and carefully check the content of each document – the system runs automated checks against the data in SAP and the approval process is electronic and is subject to fixed rules. This automated solution reduces administrative process costs by over 50 percent.
The successful implementation was followed by re-testing and penetration tests in order to verify the system’s resistance against security threats. Hana Horálková, IXTENT’s Project & Resource Manager, commented on the testing: “The tests turned out very well, only a small number of risks were found, and we are working hard together with the product manufacturer on their elimination.”
Course of Cooperation
IXTENT has previously implemented several projects at Unipetrol – for example, a comprehensive workflow solution for management of internal processes based on Microsoft SharePoint and NINTEX Workflow platforms, a solution for processing of invoices in SAP based on the ReadSoft platform, and the cooperation between the client and IXTENT does not end even with this upgrade.
Ivan Mokříš, Head of the Application Section at Unipetrol, commented on the project: “I can tell success of a project firstly from the satisfaction of business process owner and secondly from the satisfaction of end users. I have a positive feedback from both groups. My long-term experience with IXTENT have once again been confirmed by the smooth running of the project. Maturity of the delivered solution usually shows up when the implemented system is subject to tests by our security experts. Even in this respect, the delivered solution passed more than well.”