The tool lets us centralize management of our services in an orderly fashion, with controls regarding execution times and real-time monitoring of status.

The big challenge at Dos Pinos

Before all of this exponential growth, a challenge emerged to improve customer, employee and provider management. Some of the approaches to helping overcome this challenge were standardizing procedures, automating operations and eliminating paper-based activities or those done by hand. That is why the company has undertaken this endeavor by leveraging SoftExpert solutions. Ericka Mora Alvarado, Services Management Manager for the Shared Services Center, says that Dos Pinos made a corporate and strategic decision to have a shared services center that would allow different processes to be integrated in a single point. That is why they decided to look for a BPM that would allow processes to be automated to maintain traceability, measure response times, analyze them and audit them. A BPM would be a solid step toward achieving the goal of creating a successful Shared Services Center. Nevertheless, in addition to seeing integrated processes, the client found that these processes would need to be integrated into its policies, procedures and quality management system, which made it evident that more solutions or integrated functionalities were required, such as analytical requirements, document management, incident management, and management of customer satisfaction assessments. With these challenges on the table and a willingness to gain more market share in its region of operations as well as in its internationalization process, the company saw a need to find a management system that could cover all of these opportunities.

Behind a challenge lies a solution!

To solve the problems permeating the company and therefore gain better results and productivity, while reducing time and costs, they chose the components in the SoftExpert Excellence Suite: Process, Form, WorkFlow, Incident, Analytics, Document, Survey, Case and Request or Incident Management. Now the solution is used by the entire company, which comprises 10 cooperative-business areas, including Costa Rica, the Dominican Rep., El Salvador, Nicaragua, Panama and Honduras. There are more than 3,500 in-house employees and 10,000 providers. The main goal of the Shared Services Center is to automate the larger number of processes in order to achieve productivity and efficiency. This is done through continual improvement projects that assess the requirements of the company's areas or departments and validates them using the technological solutions the company now has. According to Ericka, the company now has 192 processes within the Shared Services Center and 70% of the services offered at the Center are executed using the SoftExpert Excellence Suite. "On average, 18,785 cases are handled each month in the accounts billable, accounts payable, master data, innovation and process management, messaging, procurement, staff services, general services, auditing, commercial, finance, research & development and other areas," she says. The use of SoftExpert Excellence Suite solutions in the Shared Services Center has begun to bear fruit, as we will see below.

Behind a solution lies major results!

One of the advantages that Dos Pinos saw in the SoftExpert Excellence Suite in terms of decision-making is that it is a solution that already has cases of success in other organizations in the region and that it is a tool that covered the need to natively integrate multiple functionalities. According to Ericka, "implementation of the SoftExpert Excellence Suite at the Dos Pinos Services Shared Services Center has brought us significant benefits that are reflected in our productivity and in economic benefits. The SoftExpert Excellence Suite is a tool that lets us centralize management of our services in an orderly fashion, with controls regarding execution times and real-time monitoring of status. Moreover, because of its features, we've created integrations with other applications we have, which contributes to lowering response times for our internal and external customers." When we asked Ericka which benefits the SoftExpert Excellence Suite products or services add to her team's or the company's routine, she mentioned "process traceability, SLA measurement, indicators and automatic reports. Paperless processes make the company more sustainable. Other results found were defining and implementing a BPM tool that integrates all administrative processes and that has every property needed to correctly analyze them. This is in addition to mapping, documenting, measuring and controlling each process and request to improve customer service and automate the relationship that external providers and internal customers have with processes. Finally, Ericka recalls the flexibility and ease in learning to use the tool, since the Shared Services Center has an internal team that develops and implements SoftExpert Excellence Suite functionalities in the company's different areas, creating efficiency in the advancement of the Shared Services Center.

A future free of mystery

When asked about the future of Dos Pinos, the Services Management Manager for the Shared Services Center says that there is still plenty to explore in the SoftExpert Excellence Suite's solutions to develop new fronts for obtaining results. According to Ericka, "there are a few modules we are not using; we are identifying which could provide us with new integrations with the processes developed and for development." The future seems brighter and more promising when there is certainty that solutions are available that will let the company evolve more and more.