Manchester Airport Group - Xoomworks Uplifts Airport Purchasing

Manchester Airports Group called in the experts to help upgrade its Ariba system and support procurement professional  

The MAG challenge:  Manchester Airports Group adopted Oracle as its back-office system in early 2004. Ariba had already been installed as a group-wide procurement platform and it soon became apparent that the two systems needed to be integrated. But to do this, the existing Ariba system would have to be upgraded. It was also clear that further help was needed to configure Ariba to meet the needs of more than 100 purchasers at MAG, who place up to 5,000 orders a year with more than 2,000 suppliers.

In the longer term, managers at MAG, the second largest airport operator in the UK, comprising Manchester, East Midlands, Bournemouth and Humberside airports and handling more than 27 million passengers a year, realised that day-to-day assistance would be required to support the procurement professionals using the system.

The Xoomworks solution: MAG were impressed with the professional approach taken by Xoomworks, their technical knowledge and their emphasis on developing excellent relationships with all stakeholders involved in the project. Xoomworks were chosen to carry out the integration work.

However, Xoomworks advised that the Ariba system being used would have to be upgraded to support MAG’s requirements. They were asked to go ahead with the update and this was quickly completed.

It then became clear that there was more to be done before the new systems would be able to meet the needs of MAG’s procurement professionals and their suppliers. Xoomworks were asked to configure the Ariba system and this was again completed efficiently. Having integrated the two systems, upgraded Ariba and reconfigured it, MAG realised they needed expert help to deal with day-to-day problems. Xoomworks were asked to provide a helpdesk to meet the need.

This includes daily checks in which the support team runs through a set of system tests to highlight issues with ERP integration failures, system metrics, PO and receipt failures and punchout suppliers.

Xoomworks have added a new MAG ticket to their own ProblemTracker software and resolve all issues assigned to them through this against a set of defined SLAs.Xoomworks scope and define technical and pricing specifications for the development of all new Ariba functionality. These change requests have included Oracle integration updates, new account validation for project codes and research into single sign-on.

Further, Xoomworks were involved in the planning and execution of the extension to of the Ariba system to MAG’s regional airports. This supported the development of the group’s new shared service centre, using Ariba exclusively for procurement integrated with Oracle.  

“We have a warm, productive relationship with MAG. They know they can pick up the phone to us at any time and we will help and produce results.”

David Bone, Managed Service Lead at Xoomworks