UTi, one of the industry’s leading non asset-based and global third party logistics providers, has engaged with Adapt IT to automate their Credit Note management system. UTi recognised that accuracy and effective reporting functionality are key to a good Credit Note management system and by replacing its manual system with an automated one could result in the company saving on both time and money.

Adapt IT introduced UTi to Apparo FastEdit – the software used for the development of the solution and after a few short sessions with the Adapt IT FastEdit experts, the UTi Business Intelligence Team was able to develop the solution within a very short timeframe.

Antoinette Smit, Senior Manager for Business Intelligence at UTi says: “The Credit Note Application system we were using was a manual system that consisted of a number of processes and ultimately presented a number of challenges that needed us to urgently resolve.”

According to Corneil Lubbe, Managing Executive and Solution Architect for Adapt IT, the implementation involved IBM Cognos 10.1 as the front end Business Intelligence platform, Microsoft SQL Server 2008 as the back end database, and FastEdit as the application environment in which to create the system.

“From an implementation perspective, the fact that Adapt IT has been involved in a number of projects of this nature in the past meant we were able to meet UTi’s needs very quickly. Furthermore, we are not only the African provider of FastEdit software, but we possessed the relevant Cognos experience to deliver support into the environment,” says Lubbe.

“One of the biggest benefits the client has seen has been the massive time saving in respect of capturing, managing and retrieving Credit Notes, since everything is in a single repository and the Excel spreadsheets have been done away with.”

Smit adds that everything is now system-driven, with the Workflow component of FastEdit ensuring that list of Credit Notes are delivered correctly and efficiently for approval. It is a paperless process, meaning time and money is saved by avoiding the repeated printing previously required as part of the approval process.

“Additionally, Reporting - as well as access to the FastEdit business cases - is done via Cognos, making it a one-stop-shop solution.”

“Perhaps the most critical benefit is the fact that there is time and cost savings, because no more manual checks are required, the system enables us to manage and control the entire Credit Note process from start to finish, while  vastly reducing the potential for human errors,” she concludes.

Due to the success of this project, UTi asked Adapt IT to assist with the design and implementation of their Metrics Capturing Project, again using a combination of IBM Cognos and Apparo FastEdit as the front end.