Trivial matters, practical solutions at BeeOffice

Twentieth Anniversary Application

20 years of development – and BCC has grown from a small company to join All for One. During this time, new teams and procedures were created, the structure grew. In a company with 50 employees, many topics could be brought under control by sending emails, submitting paper requests or simply getting along. After a while, the scale – expressed in the number of business trips, purchase requests or IT equipment being registered – became very large and forced the computerization of these seemingly “trivial" processes.

This is how Virtual Office came into being in 2005. In the following years of use and further development of the organization, new requirements and ideas for new functions appeared. At the same time, while carrying out work for clients, we observed that many companies had the same problems and challenges and lacked similar solutions.

Michal Kunze, Director of Software Development, Member of BCC’s Board of Directors, emphasizes: “The idea of providing the portal was suggested to us by our clients themselves. Often on the occasion of sales or project meetings, when we were planning further work, checking the availability of consultants in the Scheduler or booking a conference room for a meeting, we heard: we could also use such an application at our place."

Therefore, we decided to prepare the next version of the solution with dual use in mind. The successor of Virtual Office – BeeOffice – is today the basis for managing BCC’s business facilities. At the same time, we have been offering BeeOffice to our clients since the beginning of 2013.

“The BeeOffice platform is a solution that was developed in response to specific needs at BCC. Ideas for further functions and even entire modules often came out from our employees who use the solution on a daily basis. This is still the case today. More than 300 people in the Group are our testers, first reviewers and originators of new solutions. BCC is BeeOffice’s development lab, where we test and develop new features before releasing them to customers. This ensures that they receive a mature product that meets the real needs of users, both those inside BCC and those working at our clients’ sites, and is not a projection of the application developers’ ideas about the implementation of a given process. We base the operation of All for One Software Factory on this philosophy. We offer services of creating and developing software of the highest quality, the functionality of which is well matched to the specific expectations of our clients," – Michal Kunze adds.

BCC optimizes business costs with centralized HR and payroll management, shared accounting, marketing and administration. The 12 integrated modules of the BeeOffice employee self-service platform streamline work, improve communication, and save time and money.

From behind the scenes (currently All for One Poland) is quite a large “office" organization: 300 people, four locations, employees (consultants, salespeople) in constant rotation.

The nature of the business (the provision of consulting services, mostly at the client’s premises) additionally makes a large share of the administrative processes occupied by the organization and settlement of business travel and all that it entails (the company’s fleet of cars, company housing, requests and approval of business trips).

And then there’s a whole bunch of typical office tasks and problems: someone is looking for a contact for an HR specialist, someone else would like to check if the WM team leader is in the office today, every employee is several vacation requests a year, everyone uses the notebook and cell phone entrusted to them, sometimes in addition to other equipment or shared resources (e.g. projector, conference room). Accounting accounts for thousands of purchase invoices – from tea and mineral water to six company kitchens and office supplies, to equipment for the data center for hundreds of thousands of zlotys.

Plus dozens of other matters – minor and more complex. Each of them encased in procedures, controlled and managed: applications, substantive approvals, financial approvals, billing, controlling… At BCC, all of the above and many other administrative and clerical tasks are handled through the powerful tools of the BeeOffice portal.

BeeOffice is a specialist for small and repetitive issues that, when the scale of the business is large – added up – represent a real large cost – and therefore room for savings.

Piotr Rogala, Chief Financial Officer, Member of the Board of Directors of All for One Poland

Savings at every step
Dozens of BCC employees log into BeeOffice every day. With BeeOffice, every process – whether it’s billing a business trip, verifying a purchase request, or handling a vacation request – runs smoother and faster. We save time and money at every step. When we multiply these small savings by the number of activities handled in BeeOffice, it becomes clear that the value of the improvements on a yearly basis and for the entire organization is enormous.
Piotr Rogala, Chief Financial Officer, Member of the Board of Directors of All for One Poland

The BeeOffice platform, which is accessible via a web browser, is used by all Group employees to handle their own personnel matters and settlements with the employer. Team heads approve requests from subordinates, while those responsible for selected administrative processes are provided with the insights, functions and reports necessary for their execution. Rich reporting capabilities are used to control expenses, allocate administrative costs by area and team, reliably handle settlements with employees (vacations, business trips), as well as clients (accounting for logistical costs of projects).

Below, BCC employees tell how they use BeeOffice in their daily work.

Company’s Who’s Who, Schedule asap

Not only a new employee, but anyone else in an expanded organization can feel lost in the company’s structure. Who is Iksinski’s superior, what are the people I am supposed to work with, what is the phone number of the human resources department, in which office does Ygrekowski work… BCC (currently All for One Poland) is more than 300 people, scattered in four offices in different cities, and in addition, a significant part of our employees spend most of their time on business trips – on consultations with clients. The information available online with basic contact information, the name of the position and the place in the structure of the organization and a photo of the employee makes it easier to contact and orient to our company. And not only for new employees.

The Employees and Structure modules are an ever-present corporate who’s who, which additionally forms the basis of the BeeOffice architecture used by the solution’s other modules (e.g., Holidays, Delegations, Requisitions).

Another area of BeeOffice without which, after several years of use, I find it hard to imagine working is the Scheduler. On the one hand, I can check at any time whether the consultant I want to meet with is in the office and not, for example, on consultation with a client, sick leave or vacation. On the other hand – more importantly – I can “control" the schedule of my subordinates and account for their activities in the selected period. At BCC, we plan work in the long term (projects for clients last several months each) and account for consultants’ days, but “switching" to hourly billing is just a matter of settings in the system.

The scheduler is a clear table of employee activities, scheduled or completed. Filters allow you to select any time period and people (e.g. selected organizational units, project teams, individual employees or a self-defined group). If I want to see exactly what’s behind a particular entry in the schedule, I can look at the details. This is a very useful feature, because due to the project nature of our work we use several hundred codes to mark clients.

The scheduler function is especially indispensable during the vacation season. When accepting an employee’s vacation request, I first check in the Scheduler to see if someone on the team will be able to replace him or her, and BeeOffice automatically alerts me if employees’ vacations on the team overlap.

Recording the planned activities of employees also allows for more advanced activities, such as billing for work, scheduling invoices and preparing data for invoicing, as well as providing data that is used to assess the available and planned potential of work to be performed. This information is further used to estimate cash flow in subsequent periods.

Expenses under control

No one involved in finance needs to be convinced of the advantages of centralizing approval and accounting for corporate purchases.

Demands in BeeOffice is a tool that makes sure that no unapproved purchase and unauthorized invoice slips through our control screen. The purchase of a material or service is always conditional on substantive and financial approval of the requisition in BeeOffice.

When an invoice finally arrives in accounting after the purchase of goods or services – each time it is correlated with the demand in BeeOffice: it has its own owner, it is described with the appropriate identification number. From the purchase of office supplies to the Better Business printing order, we can check who made the demand and when, who approved it substantively, who approved it financially. This information provides us with the basis for paying the invoice, posting costs and assigning them to teams, for internal controlling purposes.

Thanks to BeeOffice, we have full control over company expenses and incoming invoices, which in the long run – using cost analysis capabilities – allows us to reduce them.

In addition, BeeOffice, through a special interface, is integrated with our financial and accounting system SAP, so the purchase data goes directly into it without having to re-enter it.

We can easily analyze the history of company purchases in any cross-section (by employee, selected element of the organizational structure, accounting period, value, etc.).

In sequence, it looks like this: An employee in BeeOffice submits a requisition on a special form, entering its type, object, value (in any currency – the system does the conversion itself, at the appropriate NBP exchange rate). In addition, he can add a description, assign costs to other people or tasks (e.g. project-related purchases). The activated request goes to the supervisor, who, after verification, accepts (or rejects, or sends back for completion). The approval path can be freely configured, e.g. extended by additional levels depending on the value of the purchase.

3738 purchase requests in 2014

Once the purchase is completed and the invoice is received, the employee – the “owner" of the invoice – is required to deliver it (properly described) to the accounting department. The system also allows you to attach an attachment. There is no possibility that an invoice for an expense that has not been previously registered and approved in the portal will reach accounting.

The entire circulation of the request is done electronically, and all subsequent participants in the process are informed of the next steps – executed and waiting for their reaction (e.g., approval) via e-mail.

Piotr Rogala
Financial Director, Member of the Board of Directors of All for One Poland, responsible for finance and administration

For the employer – order, for the employee – convenience

Handling vacation requests is just a slice of HR’s job, but how important. Employees usually call HR with questions about how much leave they can still use and whether, for example, they have already used extra childcare days this year. With us, there are no such questions, because anyone can check their current “balance" for any type of leave at any time.

The entire process takes place in BeeOffice. In the Holidays tab, the employee sets up a new leave request. If he has other previously scheduled activities, the system will inform him of a clash of dates. By selecting a type of leave from the list, he can immediately see how many more days he has available. BeeOffice will not allow a request that exceeds the limit. Now it remains to activate the request and wait for the supervisor’s approval. If the leave is approved by the boss, the employee receives the relevant information by e-mail, and the status of the request changes to approved.

The number of vacation days still available updates automatically, and in the Schedule the days of absence will be marked with the appropriate code (the letter U), which is visible to other employees. At the same time, full knowledge of planned, used and unused leaves of subordinates is available to the supervisor, who can see the relevant report in his panel.

In BeeOffice, keeping a company’s vacation schedule is very simple. Employees can enter subsequent requests, e.g. with a distant date, in the status New – which still gives them a chance to change them. The supervisor can see the employees’ vacation plans – so he can react early if, for example, the vacation dates of key team members overlap.

In addition, the leave application can also include information on substitutions, as well as comments and attachments (such as supervisor approval for unpaid leave).

The role of BCC’s HR department in handling leave settlements is twofold. First, on an ongoing basis, we record approved leave from a given pay period. In addition to recording requests, this activity triggers an interface that integrates BeeOffice with the HR and payroll program, providing it with information for calculating payroll components associated with leaves.

Magdalena Owczarczak, Manager of the Human Resources Management Team

2367 vacation requests in 2014

The second type of activity is performed periodically and involves updating individual leave limits (e.g., changing the limit from 20 to 26 days of annual leave, additional childcare days, at the request of the employee).

Vacations is an area where we have completely eliminated the circulation of paper documents. We save paper, speed up circulation and access to information. “Centralizing" the handling of vacation requests in BeeOffice means that for the employer, the process is organized, and for the employees, convenience and greater satisfaction.

Magdalena Owczarczak
Human Resources Team Manager, All for One Poland

Business travel – from planning to accounting

The Delegation module centers around a self-service form available online for the employee, supervisor and accounting. The entire process of business trip planning, supervisor approval and expense accounting takes place in this one place.

The employee himself enters all the data related to the trip: business purpose, time, destination, costs, etc. After the trip, he completes the form with the actual costs incurred, can attach scans of invoices and other necessary files. BeeOffice ensures that the entire process complies with the law (the amount of per diems, etc.) and makes foreign currency conversions (according to the NBP exchange rate table updated online). Then the application again goes to the appropriate person or persons for approval. The approved form becomes the basis for reimbursing the employee for the trip.

We have more than 300 employees at BCC, and annually we settle nearly 4,500 business trips: from one-day consulting trips to clients in Poland, to projects in such exotic places as Nigeria or Indonesia. We have been using the electronic delegation accounting system for five years now. BeeOffice is a considerable saving for us. Given the necessary detail required to analyze the profitability of projects, we estimate that using the traditional, paper-based model for handling this process would “cost" us an additional 3/4 FTE in accounting.

Cross-sectional statements give us the opportunity to optimize expenses. For example, a breakdown of the number of business trips in a given city gives us information on whether it is more cost-effective to rent a business apartment or locate employees in a hotel.

Barbara Gryglik, Manager of the Finance and Accounting Team

4469 delegations in 2014

Another equally important aspect is that it saves time for the traveling consultants. They do not waste it searching for the euro or Canadian dollar exchange rate of the day. Filling out the application is very intuitive. With the number of employees and delegations in our company, we gain several days’ worth of specialists annually, which we can allocate to project work for clients.

Barbara Gryglik
Finance and Accounting Team Manager, All for One Poland

The company’s fleet on one screen

Cars are a special type of fixed asset, for which a separate module has been prepared in BeeOffice to comprehensively manage the company’s fleet. We also automatically account for fuel costs based on information from business travel settlements made by employees elsewhere in the system.

Each car is treated as a resource in the system and, like other company equipment, has its own metric with the most important information: make and model, registration number and VIN, year of manufacture and purchase, method of financing, lease contract number, fixed asset in SAP, status (used, vacant, broken down, sold) and, of course, assigned employee, and, importantly, average fuel consumption. We also have an additional field that we use to describe the technical condition of the car, paint, etc. This option comes in handy when changing the car’s user and preparing the transfer protocol.

Other tabs contain additional information, such as insurance: name of insurer, type of insurance policy number, start and end dates. Entering these dates can result in an email reminder about the upcoming expiration date of the policy. Employees who complete the dates for technical examinations will also get a corresponding reminder two weeks before the deadline.

BeeOffice also provides for the possibility of attaching attachments. These can be, for example, scans of purchase contracts, lease agreements, registration certificate or insurance policy.

The Cars module is a complete history of the entire life cycle of a car in the company – from purchase, through subsequent releases and returns, to sale. As an administrator, I have a direct view of the entire company fleet on one screen, and, after exporting to Excel, I can report data by selected parameters.

The above features greatly facilitate the management of BCC’s fleet of more than 150 cars.

However, the greatest value of the solution is the ability to very accurately control the cost of fuel consumed on business trips. Twice a month, after importing the fuel card billing received from the fuel vendor (Excel sheet) into BeeOffice, employees assign claims for the trips they have taken to a given billing period. Based on the combustion information from the car’s metric and the number of kilometers traveled as declared and approved in the business trip settlement, the system calculates the cost of fuel consumed. The accounting department can make postings.

Software order

Managing the software used in companies is an important part of the IT department’s tasks. In addition, it carries a lot of responsibility, not only financial, but also legal.

At the moment, BCC (currently All for One Poland) employees use more than 90 different programs/versions of programs. The number of licenses used is already in the thousands. The IT Licenses module in BeeOffice is our command center for company software. Here we have gathered all information about the types and versions of licenses, their number and current status – how many licenses are assigned to employees and how many are free. We can also sort them by type: licenses purchased, own, with computer. Further – each license can be “x-rayed" in detail, checking when, at what price and by whom it was purchased, and even what is the number of its acquisition document. Then – to whom and when it was issued and possibly withdrawn, including records of historical changes. We can also check IT licenses by employee – what licenses were made available to a particular person. Upon request, the system will generate for us the relevant documents certifying their issuance or withdrawal.

Newly purchased licenses are registered in BeeOffice if they are for software that has not been used before. They are then automatically made available in the Requisitions module.

This order is a value in itself, but above all it serves a number of specific purposes. First – an employee who applies for a particular license – makes a request for it as for the purchase of any other equipment or material. He has an easier task, because all he has to do is find it on the selectable list. Then he just waits for approval from his superiors. We, as the IT department, can see whether we have the needed license in the reserve pool or whether it needs to be purchased. We manage license purchases better and control their costs.

The issued licenses are automatically assigned to the employee.

In a similar way, team leaders prepare a position for a newly hired employee – simply by submitting requests for the necessary IT licenses.

And in the event of an audit of the legality of the software – we can trace the fate of each license and its current status in BeeOffice at the request of the auditors, additionally submitting documents certifying the releases.

Grzegorz Kitkowski, IT Support Team Leader

1817 licenses used in BCC

In a company like ours, which bases its entire business on IT: implementing and producing software and maintaining IT systems and infrastructure, tidiness in one’s own backyard is essential.

My ambition as the head of the team responsible for IT support for BCC employees is that services for internal customers should be provided at a similar level and based on similar standards as for external customers. IT licenses at BeeOffice are one of the tools for this goal.

Grzegorz Kitkowski
IT Support Team Leader, All for One Poland

Computers, phones and other equipment

At BCC, the BeeOffice Devices module is used by the Administration Team to record cell phones and in the IT Support Team, which administers other equipment entrusted to employees. These are mainly notebooks and related peripherals (external memory, mice, power supplies, VPN cards, headphones, etc.). In addition, the system stores information about input cards, landline phones, etc. assigned to an employee.

Just like cars – each piece of equipment has its own metric with full information and history of releases and returns. The level of detail of the data varies and depends on the value of the equipment. In our company, the most valuable are notebooks, for which, in addition to the basic ones (brand, model, serial number, date of purchase and release, fixed asset number in SAP), we also store additional information, such as the condition of the device, end of warranty date, purchase invoice number, OEM license, memory size, etc.

We can freely define the type of additional fields, and then, for example, export the data to Excel for further analysis (e.g. checking which devices are still covered by the manufacturer’s warranty, searching for specific models, etc.).

Based on the data entered, we generate (and print) dedicated documents for the release, return or destruction of equipment. BeeOffice has also cleaned up the management of equipment entrusted to employees by introducing unambiguous definitions of device types. We know exactly what, in what condition and how many pieces we own. This allows us to make better use of company assets and optimize costs.

Magdalena Radomska, Administration Team Manager

7031 devices on record

And finally, the favorite option of the BeeOffice Devices module for those involved in the administration of company assets: the Inventory tab, where each employee can see their equipment. The annual record of company assets, including equipment entrusted to employees, is much easier and less labor-intensive with us. The employee himself verifies and confirms his inventory, and if there are discrepancies, he reports them, specifying their type.

Magdalena Radomska
Administration Team Manager, All for One Poland

Book yourself a projector

At BCC, much of the equipment and other resources used on a daily basis are shared, without being assigned to a specific person. With regard to equipment, these are mainly projectors and teleconferencing sets. Conference rooms in all BCC offices are also in high “demand". In addition, the company has already accumulated quite a library of manuals on programming, SAP and related systems. In addition, shared resources are IT systems – testing, training, demonstration, as well as training terminals. And finally, staff housing. We permanently rent apartments for BCC employees in Poznań, Warsaw and Cracow – that is, where the company has its offices. Periodically, we also use rented premises in cities where we run large and long-term projects, and this form of accommodation for employees during business trips is more cost-effective than a hotel.

A separate category is business travel bookings – which allows us to centrally manage hotel reservations and airline tickets.

Employees, on behalf of themselves or their colleagues, can book the resources they need, whether for a specific time (e.g., a room and projector for a work team meeting) or for a selected period of time (e.g., a business trip to Krakow for several days). It is always possible to check who has reserved a particular resource, for how long and for what purposes (e.g., for work for a particular client).

The Reservations module in BeeOffice allows us to maintain order in the management of shared movable and immovable assets.

Convenience, saving time when organizing a meeting, avoiding conflict situations when two people want to use the last available projector at the same time, and another small contribution to building the company’s image with customers as an orderly organization – these advantages are emphasized by employees.

Joanna Maczugowska, Administrative Specialist

6538 resource bookings in 2014

On the side of organizational management and cost control, the Reservations module gives access to information about the use of a given resource over a selected period. It helps answer, for example, the question of whether we need additional equipment for teleconferencing, and whether, given its occupancy, it pays to maintain a company apartment or whether it would be cheaper to use hotels.

Joanna Maczugowska
Administration Specialist, All for One Poland

Company bulletin board

Effective communication and easy access to information are among the most important factors for the “health" of a company. It was therefore natural to create a place in BeeOffice where you can quickly find the data you need, but also leave a slightly less formal message for other users.

What is the schedule of internal training and how to sign up for it? What are the terms of group insurance for BCC employees and with whom to arrange it? What can you get a subsidy from the social benefits fund for? Where to find the appropriate application? I urgently need a presentation template and pictures from a graphics bank! Someone once wrote something on this subject, but as bad as it is, I can’t find the email now….

Such questions and problems are easily answered by the Forum in BeeOffice, where all information is intuitively available, grouped in appropriate thematic threads, led by the HR, administration or marketing teams. The exchange of knowledge, experience and information (e.g. descriptions of solutions to problems with system configuration, programming threads) is served by closed consultant forums.

85 thematic threads

And the bulletin board works true to its name: “can anyone recommend a plumber in Krakow?", “I’ll sell a children’s bicycle", “we are assembling a team for the Business Run in Poznan and are looking for volunteers"… The forum in BeeOffice also allows you to relieve the mailboxes of those not interested in these topics and focus on other priorities. It is a friendly medium of informal communication for the exchange of experiences and information, but also – for the integration of employees.

Anna Witkowska
HR Specialist, Al Poland

All notifications in one place

Every event in BeeOffice concerning our case or requiring our action is announced by an e-mail sent to the employee’s company mailbox, from which one can go directly to the relevant form. Such a mechanism is helpful for day-to-day work. But sometimes, in a flurry of correspondence, e.g. after a vacation, it is easy to miss a message – if the system sends several very similar messages in a short period of time about another request or demand to be accepted.

This is where Infobox comes to the rescue. It’s a kind of inbox, and at the same time an archive, gathering in one place all the notifications relevant to the user. Here we can find our pending cases, with their current status. Both those that require our response (e.g., vacation requests or subordinates’ delegations awaiting approval) and those of which we are the subject (e.g., your purchase request has been approved). From this level – going directly to the details of a given request – you can handle all matters.

Project Office, an example of the Function you are waiting for

Project management in the Project Office module is an example of handling a company’s specific needs in BeeOffice. In this case, we are not dealing with handling administrative and office processes, but with the main business activity of BCC (currently All for One Poland): conducting project work for clients. One of the advantages of using BeeOffice for this purpose is the ability to integrate information from different areas, such as consultation planning, revenue monitoring and business travel accounting.

BeeOffice supports project portfolio management in two basic dimensions: strategic planning (consultants, resources) and operational oversight (monitoring, billing). These processes involve project managers, implementation and service team leaders, consultants, as well as administrative staff.

Michal Jasinski, Project Office Manager

More than 400 projects per year of different scale and nature

The Project Office module is also one of the important sources of controlling information. Strategic information and operational data allow you to monitor and evaluate the progress of a project and forecast its profitability.

Michal Jasinski
Project Office Manager, SNP Poland