2degrees streamlines purchase to pay process

Since launching in 2009, 2degrees has made a competitive impact on the New Zealand telecommunications market. The company has built a nationwide mobile network and lowered costs for Kiwis in the process. In early 2015, 2degrees acquired internet service provider Snap to become a full service telecommunications provider. 2degrees now has over 1 million customers, 1,200 staff, and 55 retail outlets with its brand new mobile network covering 98.5% of the places Kiwis live and work, complemented by ADSL, VDSL and UFB services.

Challenge

2degrees realised its existing labour-intensive purchase-to-pay processes were significantly impacting business productivity. The business of buying lacked overall financial rigour and efficiency, with paper based purchasing and invoicing taking too long. In addition, the manual intervention necessary meant errors occurred, and end users were frustrated with long approval cycles.

2degrees selected Basware to provide an online web-based portal, with a seamless purchase-to-pay process. Since bottlenecks in automating business processes typically reside in integration with the surrounding IT landscape – 2degrees also required integration to its existing Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS) solution. With extremely diverse purchasing needs, 2degrees’ knew a specialist was required to cater for the unique requirements.

Solution

As the largest independent provider of Oracle consulting and managed services in New Zealand and Australia, DXC Red Rock offered the calibre of expertise 2degrees sought. As a provider of a full continuum of services around Oracle’s integrated suite of applications, platform services, and engineered systems, DXC provided the necessary dynamic technology leadership to integrate the two solutions.

The DXC team of consultants set up an initial workshop with four consultants meeting with 2degrees team members to gain an in-depth understanding of business requirements. As functional specifications were prepared and approved, the development work rapidly began. The DXC team delivered the full integration and initial testing within five months.

Benefits

As New Zealand’s newest full service telecommunications provider, 2degrees is laser focused on its customers. Technology is being used as an enabler for the business to achieve its goals.

Where previously a purchase order took an average of 30 days to invoice against with internal customers becoming frustrated every step of the way – modernisation will improve that experience and significantly enhance the user journey. Time is freed for other tasks and processes are no longer error-prone. The business can get on with building its network further, expanding its retail and distribution footprint, and improving customer experience.

As a result of their expertise, DXC consultants also uncovered several areas that hadn’t been set up correctly. They were able to provide suggestions for future system improvements, and looked at some reoccurring month-end issues to provide recommended actions.

“We now view DXC as a trusted partner. They offered us speed and agility with thought leadership and significant Oracle EBS subject matter expertise that we just didn’t have internally,” Alex Moffatt, IT Application Delivery Manager at 2degrees.

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