Mikrofax eProcurement Complete Implementation Of Cloud Based eProcurement Solution At Unum Insurance

Mikrofax eProcurement announce successful roll-out of their Cloud based purchasing software system in a 400 user implementation at Unum Insurance

Mill Valley, CA (PRWEB) - California based Mikrofax eProcurement Solutions today announced project completion of their cloud based eProcurement package at Unum Insurance, in partnership with Dell Computer.

Mikrofax’s Director Michael Petter said, “We are delighted with the outcome of the project at this key client – we worked hand in hand with the client to understand their challenges and provide them with an eProcurement solution that fit both their operational requirement and their financial budget”

The Mikrofax system is responsible for assisting 400 users at Unum with controlling and reporting on the purchase orders that flow out of the business to suppliers for most of the purchased goods and services. This allows Unum’s management to stay on top of delivery dates for critical items and most importantly ensures that any invoices that come in from the supplier match up with the initial electronically approved purchase order.

The system enforces a full hierarchy of internal online approvals from UNUM’s line management before an order can be placed, limiting individual liability and strengthening anti-fraud controls via tight audit trails.

Financial controls ensure that any spend is matched to a cost center and can only be spent out of an available budget, thereby ensuring all managers are spending money they have been allocated.

As a standard feature of the purchasing software, Mikrofax’s ‘punch out’ link was used with Dell’s online system – Dell were particularly pleased this being only the 6th punch out link into their system. The ‘Punch out’ capability allowed the Mikrofax user to be in the middle of creating a purchase order within the Mikrofax system but then ‘punch out’ from that system to go visit a vendor web site (in this case Dell), select from that vendors product on-line catalog and automatically return the selected items into the internal PO for onward approvals. This allows up-to-the-minute pricing and full back and forth data exchange between Unum and the vendor eliminating any paper.

Mikrofax’s Michael Petter stated, “There are other purchasing software systems that allow punch out but they are unable to perform at our price point as their overheads are much higher. We can do 90% of our competitor’s functionality for 20% or less of their cost.”

The system was wholly endorsed by Dave Kay, MCIPS, Unum’s Purchasing Manager who said, "We are very pleased with the results of the implementation, our users and stakeholders are happy, we are seeing structured input and output across the board. The benefits of timely information from the system assists in more effective business decision making. Having applied the Mikrofax system within our accounts payable environment, we look to further build on our experience and raise the bar on the data sophistication we may bring to the business.”

Esther Dann, Unum’s Senior Procurement Officer also said, "The implementation went very smoothly and due to the user friendliness of the system, there was little support requested by users post-training. For the Procurement team, this system not only gives us the control and spend visibility that we lacked but the roll-out has enabled us to get out into the business and has raised our profile".

A case study on the implementation from the clients perspective is available on line at :
http://www.mikrofax.com/aboutus/case_study/unum.aspx

Unum is a leading provider of financial protection benefits in the United States and the United Kingdom. Unum's employee benefits portfolio includes disability, life, accident and critical illness insurance, which help protect millions of working people and their families in the event of illness or injury. Ranked 260 on the Fortune 500, protecting 25 million people worldwide, serving the needs of 171,000 businesses in the U.S. and U.K. and providing benefits for 37 percent of today's Fortune 500.

Mikrofax eProcurement Solutions are a leading provider of cloud based eProcurement software systems that are used around the world by leading organizations, in both the private and public sector, focusing on solving all the procurement challenges from the typical large multi-national enterprise down to the small business.

For more information on this or any other purchasing software implementations please contact

Mikrofax Sales Teams at sales(at)mikrofax(dot)com USA +1 888 399 8586  UK +44 845 680 2302