Success story
Elcom InternationalIndustry• Computer Software

Solution• OpenText™ Information Hub (iHub)

Enabling governments and hospitals
to see huge savings and reduce risk

Procurement management solution with embedded analytics fromOpenText helps Elcom customers make better decisions and track fraud
Results
Embeds seamlessly withfinance, ERP, new databases andoutside solutions“With the help of OpenText Information Hub, we areproud to have enabled even the largest of our clientsto help solve their big data challenges.”

Offers clients big data analysis fora better view of overall operations

Executive Vice President of Operations
Elcom International

Improved decision making
and savings from analysis oftransactions
Provides an audit trail to track
fraud and inefficiency

Kevin Larnach

Enabling governments and hospitals to see huge savings and reduce risk

An international company with years of experience developing
e-procurement and private marketplace solutions, Elcom
enables public-sector institutions to gain better control overtheir procurement process. With web purchasing for business,
its procurement management solution, PECOS, gives users anattractive, easy-to-use front end while offering financial controls
like budgeting and approvals on the back end, complete with audit
trails and data feeds into Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) andfinancial systems.
PECOS also stores extensive transactional data acquired throughout
the procurement process—data that is valuable to Elcom clients. To help
those organizations better utilize that information—to reduce waste, cut
costs and make better decisions—Elcom needed a sophisticated analytics
tool that would provide its customers with a more direct and interactive
window into the data.

Big data demands call for a purpose-built solution

While some reporting capabilities were already embedded intoPECOS, Elcom required more robust analytics functionality to keep
up with clients’ big data demands. As a small company working withmedium- to large-scale organizations, they also hoped that introducing
the right functionality directly into PECOS would give them the edge
they needed to stand apart as they put expansion plans into action.
Specifically, Elcom required a purpose-built reporting and analytics
tool to access and analyze data and build dashboards from a range ofsources on the fly.

“That visibility is so helpful in regards to negotiating supplier contracts,
getting the best price and being able to aggregate your purchasing
in order to negotiate larger discounts with suppliers,” said Kevin
Larnach, Executive Vice President of Operations at Elcom.
The company looked at several leading reporting solutions, ultimatelychoosing OpenText™ Information Hub (iHub).

The OpenText analytics and reporting solution

Fully embedded into PECOS, iHub expands on Elcom’s reportingand analytics capabilities, enabling clients to have more visibility intotransactional information. As a result, Elcom’s clients can now interact
better with their data, with a complete analytical and auditing tool attheir fingertips. Interactive capabilities and customizable options anddashboards allow them to better view statistical information, including
delivery due dates, supplier performance information, and on-time
payments against schedule.

In addition, iHub helps Elcom clients connect to a newly created reporting database that adds administrative and audit trail information
to transactional data. Clients are able to pull reporting data from theirown custom systems.
The result is more holistic reporting and a better window into the procurement process. Data is continually captured and reused, enabling
periodic analysis for statutory and management reporting, as well
as regular analysis of trends and KPIs through dashboards, seasonal
analysis, comparisons and exceptions. Ad hoc and customized analysis
is also possible, creating flexible options for all of Elcom’s clients. With
that functionality in place, Elcom clients can make better decisions about
what to buy, where to buy, when to buy, how much to buy and how muchto pay, and have visibility into the total spend across departments andagencies for better price negotiations.

“Our customers get a
lot of visibility arounddeviation from process…
and that’s a huge thing.
Especially for ourgovernment clients,that governance andtransparency of spend
is absolutely crucial.”
Kevin Larnach

Executive Vice Presidentof Operations
Elcom International

Enabling governments and hospitals to see huge savings and reduce risk

Better visibility for tactical and strategic decision making

Elcom clients can access and analyze their data more effectively tomake better tactical and strategic decisions. This enables them toidentify, avoid and reduce extra costs and gain new visibility into total
spending, supplier negotiations, aggregation versus independence andcontractual versus ad hoc agreements.

“It’s often very difficult to get a holistic picture of what purchasing isgoing on inside an organization,” said Larnach. “In many cases wherea customer is using our solution, it lifts that veil, opening up theirpurchasing data to create new visibility overall.”Creates a window into big data, for big savings

Many Elcom clients are large-scale organizations, with extensive data toprocess and analyze. A government client, for instance, uses PECOS on
federal and local levels to purchase goods and services. The volumes
and value of these transactions are large, with over three million purchaseorders per year and around 12 million individual purchase order line
items—totaling almost USD $15 billion in annual spending. The Government agencies analyze nearly a terabyte of data through iHub, accessing
a dedicated PECOS reporting database, utilizing transaction and master
data, and including information from external agency-specific sourceswhere required. With the help of analytics, all of that is now possible.

“With the help of OpenText Information Hub, we are proud to haveenabled even the largest of our clients to help solve their big data
challenges,” Larnach said. By giving them true visibility into that data,
PECOS can now offer a better big picture view, to more swiftly compare
product pricing and value across facilities and divisions, analyze historicpurchasing data, manage product shortages and predict overall
demand for goods and services. Improved procurement processes anduse of embedded analytics in web procurement has helped Elcom’s
clients achieve over USD $1 billion in savings in the past seven years.

Reduced risk with greater fraud prevention

Clients can now access an audit trail for every transaction, creating bettertransparency around spending. This makes it easier to identify improprieties or missteps along the way and take appropriate action to make surethat they stop. “Our customers get a lot of visibility around deviationfrom process and deviation from auditable responsibilities throughthe system, which comes out of the reporting that we’ve implemented
with iHub,” Larnach said. “Especially for our government clients, thatgovernance and transparency of spend is absolutely crucial.”

About OpenText

OpenText, The Information Company,enables organizations to gain insight
through market leading information
management solutions, on-premises orin the cloud. For more information about
OpenText (NASDAQ: OTEX, TSX: OTEX)
visit opentext.com.
Customer stories

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