The document discusses an Indian conglomerate company that implemented a shared services center (SSC) using Camunda BPM to automate and standardize key financial processes across its group entities. Specifically, the SSC automated accounts payable, fixed assets, and accounts receivable processes to streamline activities, improve control, and prevent information loss. The implementation of Camunda BPM provided benefits like reduced cycle times, improved productivity and visibility, quicker process adaptation, and performance monitoring capabilities. Key processes like credit/debit note management and receipt processing saw automated validations, approvals, and exceptions handling. Overall the SSC helped improve employee productivity, payment processing, and financial decision making through real-time data and analytics.

1. Case Study- SSC BPM
Solution

2. Background
The Group is an Indian Conglomerate Company with presence in infrastructure
sector, power system production and electronics products manufacturing.
Company felt the need for leveraging a new finance operating model with SSC
providing transaction processing services to group entities with the below
objectives:
• Automate a number of their mission-critical financial systems processes.
• Standard, consistent process to manage the approval procedure to ensure
control and accuracy of information.
• Increase Customer Satisfaction by focusing on business partnering and
insightful reporting.
• Build Scalable finance organization to support business growth.

3. Business Challenge: Productivity Bottlenecks and
Increased Risks
Finance functions at most group entities were heavily skewed towards
transaction processing due to duplication of efforts, legacy systems and error
prone.
Key Challenges:
• Time Consuming and Manually Intensive
- F&A process was very labor intensive as the accounting department had
to manually track invoices, enter data, and send the invoices to the
appropriate supervisors for approval.
• Error and Delayed Payment Prone
- The manual process was error prone and accounting staff spent time
tracking down errant invoices and performing non-core tasks, rather
than accounting functions.
• Lack of Visibility and Control
- Lack of ability to identify trends such as cycle time and ability to see what
financial obligations were open and where the responsibility laid.

4. PwC Approach
Accounts Payable
• Scan the invoices and upload in the system
• Index the invoices
• Verification by AP SSC executive
• Initiate and execute workflow for approval of the invoices using
predefined rules
• Dispute resolution steps for rejected invoices
• Batch mode integration with SAP and RAMCO
Fixed Assets
• Record FA scrap transaction
• Maintain documentation of FA sale
Accounts Receivable
• Ability to upload SOP
• Verification by AR SSC executive
• Dispute resolution by issue resolution team
Generic Features
• Generation of reports
• User and role specific task board
• Administration features to maintain master data
• User authentication through Active Directory
• Audit log of all activities performed
• Email notifications
Automation of Accounts Payable, Fixed Assets Disposal and Accounts Receivable processes in order to streamline the activities, improve
control and prevent loss of information. The automation is across all the group entities and the automated system should be able to interact with
the underlying ERP systems . The overall functionality implemented in these automated processes are following:
Automate processes through an overlay of Workflow and Document Management Solution

5. Software License Type Description Version
Apache Open Source Webserver 2.2
Java Open Source Software Development Kit 1.7
Liferay Open Source Portal Server 6.1
MySQL Open Source Database 5.6
Camunda BPM Open Source BPM workflow engine 7.1
JBoss Open Source Java Application Server 7.1
Alfresco Open Source Document Management System 4.2
Quartz & Spring
Batch Open Source Java-based job-scheduling API 2.2
Jasper Reports Open Source Java-based Reporting Engine 5.1
MongoDB Open Source No-SQL Database 2.2
Open LDAP Open Source LDAP Server 2.4
Maven Open Source Build Tool for BPM Artifacts
Software Stack
Amara Raja Group • F&A SSC: Technology Landscape and AMS considerations
8

6. The Solution
Camunda Chosen As BPM and Workflow Platform
In applying Camunda BPM to this process, PwC sought a technology platform
that would provide simple power by combining extreme ease of use with
comprehensive functionality.
• Open source BPM-engine
• Processes are BPMN 2.0
- standard for modeling(executable) processes
• Integrated suite of components including process design, rules, forms,
reporting, identity management and collaboration.
• Lightweight, embeddable, testable and extensible.

7. Business
Analyst
Developer
Business
Modeler
Cycle
File Repository
Camunda
Modeler
Task List
Custom
Application
Cockpit
Rest Rest/Java
Rest/Java API
Process Engine
Database
Rest
Process Participant Technical/Business
Monitoring & Operations
Components

8. Key Enablers :
Camunda Modeler
Modeling tool
Camunda Modeler is a BPMN 2.0 modeling plugin for the Eclipse IDE

9. Key Enablers :
Cockpit
Process Monitoring
tool
• Aggregates the state of all instances of a process definition and visualizes it on the process diagram
• Displays how many instances are currently waiting in each task / activity.
• Inspect/repair process instances, including retrying failed service calls.
• Create instance variables at runtime, and update variable values.
• Reassign human activities.

10. Business Drivers
• To reduce the end-to-end cycle-time of core business
processes and optimize cost of operations
Reduce Cycle
Time
• To establish automated rule-based controls and
workflows for improving employee productivity
Improve
Productivity
• To enable a holistic view of the business processes to the
stakeholders across rank and departments – provisioning
engineers, field engineers, leadership and management
across order management, service provisioning, service
assurance and invoice processes
Enable
holistic view
of Process
• To develop an agile process management framework for
quick turn-around of new services and products to be
offered to customers
Quick go-to-
market
• To monitor performance of business processes real-time
and identify bottlenecks
Monitor
Performance
ContinuousImprovement

11. Approach & Methodology in action
 Capture AS-IS process
 Model TO-BE process
focusing on the
business goals
 Simulate TO-BE
process
Model Execute Measure
 Orchestrate
Processes
 Manage Work
Tasks
 Manage
Business Data
 Define
Measures
 Collect Data
 Report
 Monitor
Measures
Implement
 Define data and
activities
 Identify and develop
Integrations
 Develop Executable
processes
BPM inherently offers
 Quick Go-to-market through
enabling short model-to-execute cycle
 Enable holistic view of Process
 Reducing cycle-time and Improving
productivity through proper analysis and
modeling of the business processes
 Monitor performance through KPI Dashboards
... and the framework for

12. Camunda In Action- Credit/Debit Note Process
Key Benefits
• Automatic routing to supervisors for approval.
• Round Robin allocation of tasks.
• Drools Rule Engine for LOA based routing decisions.
• Flexibility for approvers to seek clarification from any prior approver on that CN/DN and task
returning to the same person once clarification is provided.
• Email notifications related to assignment, approval/clarification at each process step.
• Task audit trail.

13. Camunda In Action- Receipting Process
Key Benefits
• Automated SOP Validation on a granular level.
• Automated exception handling for incomplete or incorrect SOPs.
• SOP Task Routing based on Validation result.
• Sub-Process to process the task on a granular level and minimize the error.

14. Camunda In Action- Reporting Metrics
Key Benefits
• Custom plugin for creating dashboard.
• Displays the number of process instances per deployed process definition on the dashboard page of
cockpit based on their state- Failed, Running and Ended.
• Displays the instances sum per process definition.

15. Benefits Realisation
• 75% increase in employee productivity. Fewer errors and reduced
cost
• Automatic validation of Receipting SOPs
Reduce Cycle
Time
• Automation and Streamlining of end-to-end Accounting Process.
• Automatic routing to supervisors for approval.
• Business Logic written in Drools spreadsheets for business logic
segregation and faster deployments.
• Escalation of Invoices which crossed due date.
Improve
Productivity
• Manage process in real time via, automatic work allocation,
reminders, notifications and escalations to improve visibility of the
business processes
• 100% liability tracking and process transparency.
Enable
holistic view
of Process
• Existing investments in core systems have been protected by
gradually integrating with underlying services
Quick go-to-
market
• Monitor process KPIs in real time via dashboards to improve
visibility and insight on business performance
• Ability to analyze data to make critical financial decisions.
Monitor
Performance
ContinuousImprovement

16. Other Key Benefits achieved
• Flexibility to model and execute processes which include both human and
automated tasks in a workflow
• Improve Workflow Transparency, Collaboration and Quality
• Eliminate/reduce routine low value added work using automation
• Improve Exception Management
• Monitor and Manage Process in real time via dashboards, automatic work
allocation, reminders, notifications and escalations to improve insight on
business performance
• Enable Continuous Process Improvement and Future proof IT investment by
using industry standard process modelling using BPMN standard
• Protect existing investments in core systems by integrating with underlying
services

17. Thank You!
debopam.deb@in.pwc.com
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