Ncell modernises and streamlines its business spend management

Client Challenge: Ncell wanted to streamline its operations and capitalise on savings by breathing new life into its business spend management system

Solution: As a strategic partner of Axiata Group, Capgemini helped Ncell digitise its procurement landscape to achieve more efficiency, visibility, and savings

Benefits:

• Better visibility and control over business spend
• Streamlined operational processes
• Enhanced data analytics and reporting
• More informed decision-making and reduced risk
• Increased user adoption rates

Ncell digitises its operations to create a brighter digital future

Ncell is the largest mobile operator in Nepal and a subsidiary of Axiata Group Berhad, a leading telecommunications group in Asia with a strong presence all across the region. Committed to building a best-in-class mobile network experience, Ncell is constantly working to achieve its goals of connecting the entirety of Nepal through its network and providing high-quality modern services that deliver better value for its customers and partners.

To take the country towards a brighter digital future, Ncell decided to accelerate its digital transformation by partnering with Capgemini, starting with a complete overhaul of its procurement landscape to drive operational excellence and cost savings. The Nepal-based mobile operator understood that its legacy, on-premises procurement landscape was no longer able to support its evolving business needs. Complex manual processes coupled with a lack of pre-negotiated contracts had greatly increased the company’s business expenditures. Ncell’s legacy procurement system also made it difficult for its teams to analyze their spend effectively due to fragmented processes, which made reporting cumbersome.

To overcome these challenges, Ncell chose to embark on a procurement transformation journey with Capgemini, which offered strong technical capabilities and a proven track record of delivering high-quality, customer-first experiences for its clients across the region, as demonstrated by its strategic partnerships with several operating companies in the Axiata Group.

Designing a future-proof digital platform to unlock greater cost savings

To design and deploy a best-in-class procurement system for Ncell that would meet its precise business requirements, Capgemini conducted a business process alignment workshop and performed a deep-dive into the company’s existing procurement landscape. Fueled by these insights, the partners chose to implement Coupa’s Source-to-Pay (S2P), Supplier Information Management, and Advanced Analytics modules into Ncell’s existing SAP ECC system.

Ncell’s ambitious transformation roadmap was delivered over a span of 11 months. Leveraging a hybrid agile-cum-waterfall approach and Capgemini’s iCaptivate methodology, the partners were able to fast-track the program while ensuring minimal disruption to Ncell’s business operations. A comprehensive stakeholder and change management framework was deployed simultaneously by the project team to ensure a smooth transition.

Seamless remote delivery powered by virtual collaboration

With its new business spend management system, Ncell’s transactions can be seamlessly consolidated into a single suite, which makes it easy for the business’ teams to track and report on business expenditure using real-time data. In addition, Ncell’s procurement team can now leverage pre-negotiated contracts easily as well as partner with pre-registered suppliers to maximise savings and reduce risk. Despite rolling out the new procurement system during the COVID-19 pandemic, which necessitated that all work shift to a remote delivery model, Ncell’s teams easily gravitated towards the new and improved platform with its simple and frictionless user interface.

Using virtual collaboration tools, Ncell and Capgemini were able to seamlessly navigate the pandemic restrictions and revamp the company’s procurement landscape to drive operational excellence. The successful partnership demonstrated Ncell’s strong commitment to creating better value for its customers and partners while providing another proof point of Capgemini’s aptitude for delivering best-in-class, cloud-based business solutions.