Lausanne Customer Story
©SiL
How Lausanne customised their purchasing process with Stelo
Services Industriels Lausanne (SiL) are a public sector service that operates as part of the City of Lausanne municipal government in Switzerland. Created in 1896, they are the central actor of the local public service. They manage the city’s infrastructure and technical services. SiL is comprised of more than 600 employees, divided across 6 services. Their annual revenue exceeds €470 million per year.
Opportunity
Modernise and simplify with S/4HANA
Over the past few years, SiL have being carrying out a digital transformation project moving from older manual business processes to S/4HANA. Their plan in 2024 was to implement SAP standard purchasing processes.
The goal of the project was to introduce simple, modern, user-friendly applications for the creation of suppliers and purchase requisitions. The business first adopted the standard SAP applications; however, they found they did not meet their internal process specifications. Inconsistency with in-screen messaging and a lack of variable approval steps meant that standard applications could not be used within the organisation. SiL went searching for an alternative solution that would enable them to meet their initial project goals. They found that solution in Stelo.
Solution
Stelo : Customising Fiori to empower business users
In 2024-25, Arch was asked to rebuild the supplier and purchase requisition processes using Stelo. Stelo is our SAP Fiori process platform which accelerates the development of custom Fiori forms and apps, enabling the delivery of better custom apps. Arch delivered three Stelo apps: New Supplier, Create Purchase Requisition, and Create Substitute, as well as customized Stelo inboxes and dashboards to keep track of notifications and the audit trail.
The design and process flow of these applications were developed to perfectly fit the customized purchasing process SiL desired. Unnecessary fields were removed, error messages were simplified, and the screen flow followed a logical progression that their users could understand straight away. The New Supplier app empowered business users to create their own suppliers, with one step approval. Create Purchase Requisition was designed with variable levels of approval to fit the complex business needs of SiL’s hierarchy. The Create Substitute application enabled users to pick substitutes for managers to act in their absence, without disrupting the process flow. All the apps worked perfectly together for a truly custom purchasing process.
©SiL
“Stelo has really simplified the process. It’s easy to use the applications because you have only what you need”
Xavier Hoffer, SiL Division Manager
Feature rich enhancements
Some features that SiL users have been particularly delighted with include: the Stelo Dashboard and Inbox, enabling easy tracking of requests; the custom process flow diagram (Flux du processus), enabling users to see where their request is currently in the process and to whom it will be routed in future steps; error validation, enabling simple non-technical explanations of what needs to be fixed; and the history tab, enabling users to see all their past requests.
Impact
Regaining user buy-in
Efficiency: Faster purchase order/supplier creation through simplified screens
Approvals: A variable number of approval steps based on business rules including the possibility of adding substitutes
Messaging: Clean understandable error messages that direct the user to their resolution
Audit Trail: Easily accessible audit trail for administrators in the Stelo Dashboard
Process Visibility: A process flow diagram to show users who will process their request next
Ownership: Empowering business users to create their own suppliers with a customised supplier search to see if the supplier already exists
Notifications: Inbox and email notifications to keep track of progress
Intuitive: Reduced training time for business users
SiL have been especially appreciative of the way Arch work. They praised Arch’s quick response time, and ability to translate complex business requirements into a fluid user-friendly experience. They were also grateful for Arch’s multilingual capacity, working in both French and English.
SiL are looking forward to further collaboration with Arch in the future.
