Throughout its 13 years of activity in manufacturing and distribution of electricity, Electrica managed and archived contracts and associated documents (annexes, invoices and orders) in different locations, generating this way an impressive volume of documents, which in time became a challenge in terms of accessing information. In addition, contracts information were stored in various applications without having a centralized evidence. Thus, Electrica employees had limited control and an incomplete view over information contained within contracts, thing that made more difficult the activities within the organization and the speed of responses to the requests from outside the organizations (partners and customers).

Electrica was facing the lack of a centralized contracts management solution to provide a unique reference list of all contracts and existing documents, and to eliminate errors as to double or cancel assigned registration numbers.

Their main objective was to implement an integrated system for electronic records, contracts and associated documents management, to provide protection against the risks associated with physical documents, to streamline employees activities, to ensure quickly relevant information to decision making processes with high impact over the entire organization.

• Managing a single register of contracts within the organization in order to manage centralized, contracts and associated documents;
• Ensuring copies of physical contracts that can be used as back-up in case of a disaster (loss/damage of the original);
• Data security and access to information storage in the contract administration solution, on authorization level;
• Acquiring fast access to documents, and their rapid transfer between users and providing informational support in order to make informed decisions;
• Defining events of interest for unique or recurrent contracts (for example: expiring contracts or other clauses, payments, deliveries resulting from contracts or additional documents etc).

As a result of increased confidence in the solutions offered by Star Storage, trust granted in previous collaborations, Contracts Administration solution was delivered on demand from our own Data Center, the most secure in Romania.

An additional requirement was to integrate Contracts Administration solution with their existing electronic archiving system (also offered also by Star Storage), to benefit of full functionalities on enterprise level (search, versioning, document viewer on access base etc.).

Mobility and availability are guaranteed through a strict SLA, the solution being in our own Data Center equipped with the latest technologies. Therefor users can access the application through the web browser, using a VPN secured connection within the intranet network of Electrica.

Build on top international platform for content management (EMC Documentum), Contracts Administration solution from Star Storage, deliver the functionalities on enterprise level, developed by our specialists to solve challenges identified in the analysis phase.

„The functionality of visualizing the working agenda by aggregating all events of interest in the contract, allowed Electrica S.A employees to have a better organization of activities by quickly see associated events to a contract, such as renewal of a contract, payments and others, ensuring this way easy access to the contract file including its updated financial picture.“ said Cristinel Barbulescu, IT Director SC Electrica S. A.

Therefore, users have the information available up to date, without wasting time to search data needed in the associated documents, invoices and other related documents.

In addition to above, the Contracts Administration solutions allows:

• The possibility of versioning contracts and associated documents, enabling traceability and offering the possibility to follow up documents to their final version;
• Minimize paper work and the risk of losing contracts through centralized administration in electronic format and by reducing human interaction in making these actions;
• Use templates in order to generate new contracts automatically, thereby considerably reducing the time allocated in the past to achieve them;
• Automatic calculation of contract value in multiple currencies and reference classes, providing real-time reports, which makes important decisions within the company.

„The solution implemented by Star Storage team, currently represents for Electrica a unique point of information on contracts, at company level, allowing contract monitoring, terms and associated documents. Thus, we can talk about a significant improvement to access documents and to transfer these information between users, so they can work efficiently in a collaborative environment, shortening the time to take decisions, thing that lead to an increase capacity of reaction both with business partners and the relationship with our customers.” said Cristinel Barbulescu, IT Manager at Electrica.

• a complete, centralized image of all contracts and related documents within the organization;
• significantly reduced costs allocated to work with paper documents;
• a single range of numbers for all departments within the company, with a unique location, automatically managed by the application, without the need for human intervention;
• secured access to information, depending on the document type and users role (management, coordinator, system administrator, etc.);
• quick access to managed information (contracts and associated documents) using metadata introduced by users;
• advanced search and retrieval of information for powerful and relevant decision support;
• notifications for contracts and associated documents automatically sent to email (for renewals, contract renegotiation, payments, delivery).