Cambridge, MA October 10, 2002 Sandia National Laboratories has implemented an enterprise document management system from solution provider 170 Systems to streamline the lab's procurement and take the paper out of the process, according to a recent announcement from 170.
Sandia, with facilities in Albuquerque, N.M., and Livermore, Calif., is operated by a division of Lockheed Martin and conducts research in national security, energy and environmental technologies, as well as economic competitiveness.
The Sandia lab is participating in an initiative, overseen by the federal government's Office of Management and Budget, to use Internet-related technologies to improve the management of joint federal, state and local programs and to apply commercial best practices to improve government operating efficiency.
Sandia, a U.S. Department of Energy lab, has integrated 170's MarkView Document Management and Imaging System with its Oracle E-Business Suite 11i, which includes Oracle' iProcurement and iSupplier Portal applications.
170 said that Sandia, by integrating its procurement application with the system, has moved its entire procurement operation online, reducing the time spent processing, storing and retrieving paperwork related to requisitions, requests for quote, contracts and their associated documentation.
Once the lab "captures" these electronic documents online, Sandia's many internal customers and auditors can access the purchasing information contained within the documents. The e-documents can be annotated with specialized stamps or notes and can be linked directly to structured data in the procurement application, where users can view actual images of order forms and supporting documents in a self-service fashion.
"Being a government laboratory, we have a lot of accountability," said Suzie Simpson, procurement team lead for Oracle applications at Sandia. "With the document management and imaging technology provided by 170 Systems, auditors and other users can log into the system to examine all the documentation associated with procurement actions."
For more information on how the U.S. federal government is using technology to streamline its acquisition processes, see "e-Pluribus Unum: Uncle Sam Wants 'e,' Or Does He?" in the June/July issue of iSource Business.
