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"We found Checkbox far better than the alternative solutions because of the usability and speed. It's intuitive to use and you can change things in a matter of seconds."
Challenge
The main challenge for HESTA was prompted by their enormous growth. Jorden Lam, General Manager of Operations and Service Delivery, stated that "with rapid growth came the need for a more mature system and procurement process". In the absence of a dedicated and centralised procurement function, HESTA was faced with the challenge of achieving consistency, rigor and a clear understanding across the entire organisation on how to procure goods and services. This challenge extended to finding a tool that empowered individuals to self-navigate the procurement framework whilst involving key stakeholders where needed.
Jorden also shared that the team really had to think about "how do we best enable and facilitate this process to be live rather than something that just sits in policy documents."
As requirements and elements of the process were mapped, the HESTA team knew that they needed a tool that was interactive and reflective of the true everyday process that occurs when dealing with external vendors.
Solution
When HESTA came across Checkbox, they saw it as a powerful enabler to "self-manage and self-design the entire procurement process." The Checkbox platform allowed HESTA to not only automate the entire procurement process, but easily adapt and make changes that could be rolled out to the wider organisation very quickly. Jorden stated that the team did look at several alternatives but found that Checkbox was far superior because of its usability, speed, and "pretty" interface that was engaging and easy to navigate, unlike other clunky no-code and low-code platforms.
But it wasn't just a great user experience for the procurement users. The Checkbox platform made designing and building the digital procurement application "very intuitive and straightforward to use."
The drag and drop application building interface provided HESTA with the flexibility to design a tool that met their specific needs and provided the user experience that they valued.
But the Checkbox technology wasn't just limited to solving this one challenge. As a platform rather than point solution, Checkbox can be used to build business applications across the enterprise. Users have already come up with more use cases as they started using the platform, and realised how adaptable and powerful the tool was. Whilst initially selected to solve the procurement framework challenge, HESTA sees an opportunity to implement Checkbox across different use cases, workflows, and processes over time. '
Outcomes Within the First 6 Months
Within the first 6 months of implementation, HESTA had effectively streamlined their procurement processes and achieved very strong outcomes. The digitised framework in Checkbox improved procurement activities such as collecting information, providing guidance and instructions, auditing, status tracking and finding information. This allowed HESTA to save a total of 793.8 hours in just the first few months of operation across the entire organisation, saving time across the risk, legal, compliance and IT teams, as well as the business.
Beyond productivity gains, HESTA was also able to use the procurement tool they built on Checkbox to strengthen their corporate responsibility and organisational values by building in clear affirmative action against their responsible procurement principles.
As an organisation that cares a lot about sustainability and taking their responsibility around environmental, social, and governance seriously, HESTA was able to bring alive their values through a procurement process that considers concepts such as modern slavery and supporting women owned enterprises. Ultimately, this resulted in a HESTA that is more impact conscious, where their values are demonstrated through action, not just understanding.
The Future
"There is a lot of opportunity to think about how Checkbox would roll out to all our other processes", states Jorden. "Checkbox is powerful because its main capability is to facilitate people working through internal processes and policies within an organisation and you really cannot count how many different processes there are."
"So, every time there is a process at HESTA that requires the application of rigor and capturing metrics, that is an opportunity for us to use Checkbox."