Digital Transformation, the key to decarbonization

Challenges faced

The pandemic played a crucial role in helping FPH understand the importance of digitalization and minimizing its carbon footprint.

• Manual processes. Approval workflows were manual and involved sifting through hundreds of emails, physical forms, and SAP data.

• Difficulty in tracking approval requests. Approval requests got lost easily without a centralized tracking tool. 

• Delayed approvals. Getting timely approvals from senior leaders was next to impossible without a mobile workflow management application.

Solution

Joseph Arnel Chavez, the Assistant Accounting Manager at First Philippine Holdings, began the search for a centralized workflow management tool for digitalization and streamlining approval workflows. 

Joseph evaluated multiple tools but chose Kissflow because it was easy to use and offered fair pricing. The senior management was also familiar with Kissflow because one of FPH’s principal subsidiaries — Energy Development Corporation — was already using Kissflow for their workflow management. 

The first win for First Philippine Holdings using Kissflow was going paperless and achieving their goal of minimizing their carbon footprint. "We seek to go beyond incremental efforts not only in sustainability but also in everything we do. With Kissflow, FPH and its subsidiaries were able to digitize dramatically major operations, especially in their finance and accounts operations.” 

Joseph and his team could digitalize their physical forms and automate their workflows quickly without the help of the developers or the IT team. This helped reduce the exhaustive hours spent manually processing them. They automated around 100 office processes that include:

• Accounts payable

• Billing

• Vendor accreditation

• Budget requests

• Contract reviews

• Invoice processing with purchase orders

• Admin requests related to employee time-offs

When asked about the number of approvals that FPH received, Joseph said they received over 1,000 requests that were difficult to track and process in time, prior to Kissflow. They had to switch between emails, physical forms, and the SAP software, which wasn’t efficient. 

Using Kissflow to manage all the approvals helped them overcome the challenge of losing approval requests. Additionally, Kissflow’s mobile app helped Joseph get timely approvals from senior leaders, as it took only a few clicks to manage them. 

While speaking about the importance of Kissflow in their day-to-day operations, Joseph said, “Our partnership with Kissflow helps improve operational and process efficiency that, in turn, enhances the way we serve our customers and vendors. At the same time, the partnership reaffirms the relevance of the FPH Group’s new mission of ‘forging collaborative pathways for a decarbonized and regenerative future."

Results

With Kissflow, First Philippine Holdings could accomplish the following:

• Reduce carbon footprint

• Automate 100+ office processes

• Process 1,000+ paper-less approvals every month

Joseph and his team are looking to take advantage of Kissflow’s integrations and unify all the processes that they run across the various tools that they use. They are also excited about leveraging the external portal feature that will help create visibility into the operations carried out by their vendors.