The Problem
KPN is a leading landline and mobile telecom company servicing 30+ million mobile subscribers across Europe. It has a far-reaching presence, a broad product portfolio, and various mergers and acquisitions. With a large volume of contracts to maintain, KPN chose ProcessMaker IDP to store agreements in a central contract repository.
At KPN, the most up-to-date contact was a wild-goose chase. Paper copies were stored in back-office filing cabinets or on hard-to-navigate shared drives. When the team needed to review an agreement, it would take hours to find the correct version.
Before ProcessMaker IDP, KPN stored documents either on a shared drive or on paper in filing cabinets. So when our sales team requested a specific contract, we had to hunt through all these sources to find it. It took us an incredible amount of time. But even when we managed to find it, we were still uncertain if that was the right version. There was no central place to look for contracts, making it an inefficient and time-consuming process.
HANS BAKKER
Contract Services Consultant, KPN
The Solution
Looking to eliminate the disorganized storage system, KPN decided to fully digitize sales contract management and create a central contract repository. KPN migrated six different environments to ProcessMaker IDP, creating a single and complete view of all sales contracts.
ENRICH CONTRACT MANAGEMENT WITH OPTICAL CHARACTER RECOGNITION
To further improve data quality, KPN integrated ProcessMaker IDP’s machine learning tools. Amongst them were intelligent Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and Post-OCR metadata extraction features. “Metadata is incredibly important for us, but filling out all the fields manually took up a lot of time,” said Bakker. “Therefore, we decided to automate metadata extraction, which helped us reduce manual work, time constraints, and data-entry errors.”
Amongst many other data fields, KPN uses ProcessMaker IDP’s algorithms to extract contract start and end dates, providing a solid foundation to implement contract retention management.
Metadata is critical for accurate search results, information compliance, and overall contract management processes. Advanced metadata not only covers the basic information about the contract, such as its title or type, but also includes the information that doesn’t appear in the contract body text itself. For example, information on whether a hard copy is stored, a reference to its internal number, or other data of interest or risk to client relationship management.
The Value Created
LEVERAGE LOW-CODE TECHNOLOGY
ProcessMaker IDP utilizes low-code technology, making it easy for everyone on your team to tap into machine learning and artificial intelligence tools. “The platform impressed us first with its look and feel. It has a clean, user-friendly, and intuitive interface,” says Bakker. “With that, it lowers the learning curve and eases the adoption of the new platform.”
IDENTIFIED GREENER WAYS OF DOING BUSINESS
By reducing the paper consumption footprint, KPN supports its status as the most sustainable telecom company in the world. The telecom company was able to eliminate paper archives and only store hard copies if required by law. With a centralized archive in place, KPN could avoid compliance risks, increase customer satisfaction, and win more deals.
