Defense Firm Uses AgilePoint to Accelerate Global Growth Strategy

Elbit Systems Ltd. (ESLT) is a high technology company and global innovator involved in a wide area of defense, homeland security, and commercial affairs across the world. The company, which comprises Elbit Systems plus its subsidiaries, serves in the areas of land, and naval systems, computers, intelligence surveillance, superior electro-optics & space systems, and communications systems.

They also center on enhancing existing platforms, advancing new technologies for defense, homeland security & commercial applications, and accommodating support services, including training and simulation systems. 

However, they had a primary challenge of integrating varied technologies amongst all the new subsidiaries, data and process consolidation, and sharing data between subsidiaries and the parent company – all while adhering to strict accounting and regulatory requirements. 

They were looking for 

• an application development solution that would align with their existing Microsoft-based infrastructure and support their global acquisition strategy. 
• a solution that would work effectively with SharePoint, VB, and .NET from a functional perspective and addressed technology requirements that called for the distribution of new applications throughout the organization. 

• a platform where users of differing skill levels can readily create sophisticated automation processes with zero prior coding experience or technical abilities.Here, during the selection process, Elbit took into consideration the two different types of users: IT pros that would build components to access various applications, and business analysts that would build process-enabled applications for the end-user without any need for specialized knowledge of the back-end applications.

Elbit knew that consistently developing and upgrading their products and services while leading their competitors, typically grow market share and raise revenue. Fulfilling that goal would depend massively on delivering business applications that can liberate automated processes and consolidate digital workflows.

They had implemented a business services architecture in which IT provided re-usable services for the business to develop applications that integrate with back-end systems throughout the organization. This also provided transparency between systems, enabled better strategic planning, and gave subsidiaries the freedom to decide which set of IT systems they wanted to use.

Now, the goal of the project was to increase their operating efficiency in processing purchase orders by at least 60%. 

They deployed AgilePoint to modernize application development by uniquely combining low-code/no-code technology with enterprise process automation to deliver automation at scale. Before the start of the project, the average purchase order processing time was 28 days.

“From a technology point of view, we have taken a best-of-breed approach. That means that we are concentrating on enabling more effective connections to our underlying systems to allow us to leverage them in new process-enabled applications.” ShmulikVolkenfeld says, the IT Director.

AgilePoint’s low-code framework would

• enable IT to build reusable no-code components as effective connections to its underlying systems. 
• enable Business analysts to create adaptive process-enabled applications to serve as shared services and orchestrate among subsidiaries and the parent company – while complying with regulatory requirements.

For Business Analysts, the no-code platform and its support for SharePoint and Office 365empowered them to develop new applications that leveraged these components without in-depth technical know-how. What this implies is Elbit could redirect valuable IT resources elsewhere that previously controlled applications development.. 

For maintenance, 

• Elbit can make changes at either the component or the process level, without affecting other parts of the system. 
• They also leverage and integrate with a Business Rules capability to govern the functionality of a given component, effectively customizing it to the subsidiary, thus addressing specific compliance and regulatory requirements.
   

  The solution of the project yielded numerous additional benefits that increased Elbit’s operational efficiency. AgilePoint provided the development framework that 

  • Enable the creation of a 550-activity purchase order application that could be consumed as a service by all of the subsidiaries. Developers worked with the feature of the Low-Code development framework, developing a component library that wraps and encapsulates the ERP system and other functional applications. 
  • Enable digital transformation while simplifying the application portfolio with intelligent automation. 
  • Provide comprehensive and contextual forms that allow users to receive the data they need to complete activities and tasks 
  • Provides a flexible reporting infrastructure that makes information available to all subsidiaries and multiple levels of management
  • Provide alerts and notifications that ensure processes are not delayed by overdue tasks and that help ensure projects finish on-time 
  • Enable the creation of a single purchase order application that could be consumed as a service and adapt to changing requirements of Elbit’s global subsidiaries without the need to create and maintain multiple versions. 
  • Accommodates a complete B2B approval system that works between major partners like Boeing and C-Level Executives Reduction of IT maintenance costs by supporting a business services model that utilizes discrete, reusable components 

   

  This sale hyper-automation yielded a 95% time decrease of average purchase order processing time - from 28 Days to 2.3 Days - and an average of less than a day for the processing time of amounts over $2M!