An Electronic Procurement System to Eliminate Manual Steps and Reduce Process Cost

Abstract

The aim of project has been to design and develop the invoice component for an electronic procurement system that is capable of eliminating manual steps in the process with the objective of reducing the cost. The requirement initiated from Sweden for a direct client of Marakanda AB. The solution provided is suitable for this client as well as being generic for any client for whom the procurement is an integral part of their business process.

The system developed is capable of extracting information from invoices which reach the system in XML format. The retrieved information is then processed automatically whilst still giving the user the option for manual interventions. During the process affected parties are notified automatically via email. To achieve this, message driven beans have been used. Overall the system used component based architecture which is inherently suitable for large business applications that are building gradually. The component developed during this project is support by few other existing modules of the company and those components were considered out of the scope of this project.

The project managed to meet its objectives and the system developed was considered as acceptable from the client in question. At Marakanda AB this system is now in the process of being implemented at the customer’s site and so far has been quite successful in attracting few more customers.