Energizing the approval process

BP Products North America has selected software from Integrify to help reduce costs and increase service levels in its back-office operations.

The management of energy giant BP was looking for a solution with the flexibility to handle spending approvals related to facility improvements, marketing programs, land purchases and zoning construction. Management also sought a solution that could be implemented quickly and changed in real time by employees. With those goals in mind, as well as the need to migrate time-intensive, paper-based processes to the Web, BP chose Integrify's iApprove Version 3.0.

"BP will be reducing costs and increasing productivity by streamlining the request and approval processes for spending approvals," says Bradley Feitl, capital planning coordinator of BP. " The solution also provides greater visibility into our key businesses. As a result, we have better operational performance. And since it is available as a service, we are able to implement our solutions very quickly and achieve a high ROI."

The Web-based process portal allows users to log in from anywhere, submit requests, check on status updates, review and approve requests and pull activity reports. Notifications in any process are sent via e-mail and also displayed on user dashboards for easy viewing.

With the new system, BP expects to dramatically reduce the time needed to submit, approve and distribute requests. The solution executes BP's custom business rules and reduces data entry by allowing requests to be automatically routed to the appropriate approvers while capturing necessary contact information as each person completes his or her step in a process.