BPM solution for a solar energy device manufacturer

Solution

Our team delivered an Odoo-based BPM solution that enables APsystems to conduct their sales, warranty tracking, purchasing, inventory, and helpdesk operations in one place. Itransition specialists also tested all the implemented and customized features and provided solution support. To ensure positive UX and seamless integration of the new solution into the company’s processes, we provided user training and support on demand.

Requirements analysis & consulting

Itransition’s team started by analyzing the system requirements to understand which software solution would fit the customer’s needs best. The main requirements included:

• Ability to exchange data between business units in real time
• Report generation
• Data security
• Fast implementation, since the customer wanted to introduce changes as soon as possible

Having analyzed the customer’s needs, Itransition suggested implementing an Odoo-based solution. Odoo’s out-of-the-box features allow for automating and streamlining disparate business operations, which facilitates cross-departmental coordination. In addition, Odoo can be easily customized to cover every unique requirement. It also offers a broad selection of third-party apps in its digital store. Plus, Odoo perfectly met the customer’s expectations for the costs and time of implementation.

Solution implementation & customization

Sales management

To effectively manage all sales processes, we set up product catalogs, price lists, invoice generation, and online order signature features. To automate the shipping process, we set up the delivery method feature that computes shipping costs for orders. Itransition’s specialists also customized the solution with a credit management feature allowing the customer to restrict the sales and stock transfers when clients reach a set credit limit.

In addition, for business development planning and forecasting, our team added the Master sales plan module by Osis that allows for drawing up a full-fledged sales plan. It ensures that APsystem’s sales managers can plan sales by product, study the supply via a convenient dashboard, and get sales forecasts in Excel files.

We also delivered the functionality for managing warranty sales and preparing warranty certificate documentation.

Warranty management

Itransition augmented the customer’s solution with the Product warranty management module by Axis Technolabs. It fits our customer’s requirements as it enables tracking warranty periods for each type of the customer’s devices and processing product warranty claims. 

However, ready-made modules did not provide the functionality for processing paid warranty prolongation, so we customized this module by delivering the feature for selling extended warranties to end clients.

When warranties are about to expire, APsystems’ clients can buy new extended ones. For APsystems to understand which unit warranties their clients have and which extended ones to offer, we connected the solution with the product management system of the manufacturing facility via API. The product management system gets queries on warranty details for each produced device, including information on warranty prolongation availability.

For end clients to see the option of buying an extended warranty, our team customized the frontend part of the Odoo online store, adding the step of checking the current warranty and offering a prolongation.

In addition, we set up the return merchandise authorization process so that the customer can conveniently manage product returns and replacements according to warranty terms.

Purchasing

This module ensures managing all APsystem’s purchasing and other expenses such as rent, communal payments, and other business costs. Odoo users can create demands that are sent to the customer’s headquarters office for approval. Once a demand is approved, a user confirms the purchase order and sends the information about the delivery to the warehouse.

Having received and processed the products, the warehouse informs the Odoo user about the products, and the user adds the details to the transfer documents in Odoo. We set up a specific user group with access to purchase pricing. Our specialists also configured custom delivery dates per product and set up an automated process of generating intercompany transactions for purchase orders so that the headquarters could get all the purchasing information.

Accounting operations

The customer utilized Exact for their accounting needs. However, since Odoo provides the accounting features together with all the others that the customer needed, APsystems switched to Odoo. We migrated the financial data the customer has been accumulating since 2014 in Exact to ensure data continuity. Our team also configured a chart of accounts in Odoo, listing them in the order convenient for the customer.

Itransition specialists also added a financial reports module. It enables the customer to work with profit and loss reports and balance sheets, get up-to-date executive summaries and cash flow statement reports, and more.

Inventory management

To organize the warehouse management process, we added and customized the inventory module. It ensures tracking the order packaging and shipping dates, regular inventory counts, managing the stock information of storage locations, and more.

Helpdesk administration

To enable the management of all end-client warranty and replacement requests, Itransition implemented the Odoo helpdesk module. We customized the functionality so that users could get a dropdown field for specific device numbers while creating helpdesk requests. This way, the customer’s managers can process requests quicker as they get all the necessary information on specific products and their warranties at once.

Requirements management process

To manage the requirements, Itransition’s business analyst continuously updated the Confluence-based project wiki with the requirements clarification and documentation. The specification was divided into:

• Current system behavior - pages that describe the functionality of the customer’s employees.
• Requests for changes pages - such pages contain information about required changes based on the customer's requests or specific business processes. Each page has a list of changes with a unique ID, status, detailed requirements, and link to the relevant Jira task.

Training

To ensure the customer’s employees are comfortable with the new solution and can utilize its capabilities to the most, Itransition provided ten training sessions with feature demonstrations. Having delivered a major functionality update, we demoed how it worked to make sure the customer’s specialists had hands-on knowledge. All demos were recorded and supported with written user guides. We also continuously provided ad-hoc help to the solution users if any questions arose.