# Purchase Order Automation and Digitalization for Our Client in the Financial Sector > Orders traveled on paper through internal mail until quotes lost their validity. Today the process runs in Jira – with digital signatures, automatic approvals and half the turnaround time. Source: https://www.xalt.de/en/case/process-digitalisation-with-jira/ Every order traveled on paper through internal mail, department by department – taking so long that quotes lost their validity along the way. Then came Covid and remote work. Today the order process runs in Jira, with digital signatures and automatic approvals: half as long as before. ## About the Project A leading international company in the financial sector in Germany with over 500 employees faced the challenge of digitizing its order process and accelerating this project due to the Covid-19 pandemic. This was meant to start the transformation of the process landscape on one hand, and reduce the time between order request and approval on the other – thereby significantly saving costs and resources through time savings and increasing employee efficiency. ## Hard Facts about the Project ### Products Used Atlassian Jira, JSU, Jira ScriptRunner and Confluence for project documentation. ### Solution and Methodology Agile sprints with a cross-functional team, DevOps, cloud native, liberated content management (anyone can write messages). ## Digitizing the Purchasing Process at a Financial Services Company ### Why should the process be digitized? The order process within companies is usually lengthy, confusing and inflexible. Before the process was digitized, every outgoing order or purchase was handled on paper. In addition, every order had to be approved sequentially by all involved departments. Using internal mail slowed the order process down even further, and often caused quotes included in orders to lose their validity. Another factor that made digitizing the order process important for the financial services company was the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, many employees suddenly had to work remotely from home. This slowed the order process down further, due to additional steps (printing and scanning documents). ### Goal – what should digitizing the purchasing process achieve? In the collaboration between the client and XALT, the overall goal was not only to digitize the existing purchasing/order process in Jira, but to make it traceable for every employee and to enable several process owners to work on an order at the same time. Another requirement of our client was to tie approval to a possible issue type in Jira and to enable digital signing with the project management tool Jira. ### Notifications, approval and auditability of the process A central problem for many companies is identifying a stakeholder in a responsible department who can approve the procurement of external goods and services. With our solution for digitizing the procurement process, all responsible parties are automatically notified by email when their approval is required. This ensures the company never misses an important order and that all quotes remain valid. It also speeds up the process, since everyone who needs to sign off on a purchase is notified at the right time. Traceability and accountability of the procurement process was a central concern our client wanted to solve. There was no central system for managing and controlling the various process steps. It was therefore difficult to trace or report what happened in individual process phases or who was responsible for certain actions. Consistent reporting across all process steps was therefore only barely possible, if at all. ## Results ### 50% Time Savings Faster order process with the help of Jira and automation integrations like ScriptRunner or JSU. ### Multi-User Process Simultaneous processing of an order by all involved departments or stakeholders. ### 100% Compliance-Secure Ensuring compliance and security throughout the entire process. ### Frontend User Interface Simple user interface for creating and editing orders and purchases. ### Reporting and Transparency Transparency throughout the entire process for all involved. ## Challenges and Solution ### Order process: mapping in Jira Digitizing the order process was meant to keep its existing structure, to simplify the transition to a digital workflow. It also had to be ensured that the process was visible at all times to all departments and process owners and could be edited by any responsible employee, while at the same time an order could not be approved by its own initiator. This ensures compliance guidelines are followed. ### Our solution Using the functionality of Jira's ticket/issue system, the manual order process could be moved into a digital environment. All active tickets, i.e. orders, are visualized on a customized Kanban board. This makes it possible to check the status of existing orders at any time and ensure that further relevant information and file attachments are accessible at all times. A user-oriented interface was also added. This enables employees to enter all relevant information directly through a central form. The advantage of such a solution is that, depending on the input, responsibilities (for example departments) are automatically defined, and the person placing the order no longer needs to make additional manual entries. ## Simultaneous, Cross-Department Processing of Orders Another challenge was enabling simultaneous, cross-department processing of orders, to further speed up the process. This was also meant to ensure that every department could move the process forward independently of the others. ### Our solution The solution was that, by using the JSU plugin, the order process could be mapped holistically and all requirements could be met. The solution also makes it possible to make adjustments to the ordering process at any time. This ensures all orders are always kept up to date and every process owner has visibility into individual orders. If changes to an order require renewed approval, the system automatically sends a notification to the responsible people. It's also worth mentioning that the signature previously required on an Excel sheet was replaced by a digital signature. ## Want to Know More About Digitizing Your Business Processes? Processes are as diverse as your company. The transformation to digital business processes is therefore no easy undertaking and requires consistent action and persuasion within your company. [Learn more](https://www.xalt.de/en/blog/digitizing-automating-sales-process-with-jira/) ## Notifications on Ticket Creation and Updates A feature was meant to be integrated that allows every department relevant or responsible for an order to receive an automatic notification about its current status, and additionally receive a reminder by email if it isn't processed. ### Our solution With the Jira ScriptRunner and JSU Automation Suite plugins, XALT was able to implement a wide range of behaviors and automations. In our client's case, this means that thanks to the JSU tool, every process owner receives a notification as soon as a new ticket is created or approved by another department. A reminder for "forgotten approvals" was also set up, which automatically sends a notification to the responsible employee. ## Value and Result In the first step, in ongoing coordination with our client, the process was mapped, all departments involved in the order process were captured, and everything was aligned with the requirements. We then began mapping the process in Jira with the help of ScriptRunner and JSU. It was especially important that only one issue type could be selected within the order process. This was meant to ensure the process had the necessary agility and simplicity (lean process). ### Reporting on KPIs With the help of Jira and Jira Service Management, we enabled our client to gather traceable data and analyze the process's most important KPIs. This ensures all process steps can continue to be improved over time. Tracking of critical SLAs and team workload is thus continuously possible. ## More Success Stories Energy trading ### [Project Portfolio Management and Resource Planning with Jira](https://www.xalt.de/en/case/eex-project-portfolio-management/) The EEX Group needed to replace its project portfolio tool – and didn't want to maintain the same data twice. Today the portfolio runs in Jira, right where the projects already lived, complete with resource planning and approvals. Project managers now need half the time they used to. Read case study → Chemical industry ### [Introducing an IT Service Management System for a Customer in the Chemical Industry](https://www.xalt.de/en/case/chemical-industry-itsm/) A chemical company had no central service desk – requests came in by email and phone and had to be manually routed to external providers. We built a portal on Jira Service Management that automatically routes tickets to the right provider and keeps both systems in sync. Read case study → FinTech ### [Optimized Identity & Access Management – FinTech](https://www.xalt.de/en/case/fintech-identity-access-management/) Managing access rights for over 600 employees by hand cost a FinTech company up to 40 days per new hire – with a 15 percent error rate. With XAAM for Jira, onboarding now takes one day, and every access grant is traceable. Read case study → ## We help your team achieve greatness in every aspect Processes are individual to every company. That's why we tailor each of our solutions specifically to your requirements. Do you have questions about digitizing business processes? Feel free to contact us by phone, email, or visit us at our office. [Contact us](https://www.xalt.de/en/contact/) --- *This version is for AI agents. Every page of this site is available as Markdown: append `index.md` to its path. 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