Public Sector
Microsoft Dynamics AX

Business Needs

The Ministry of Education in Chile is tasked with promoting education for all its people and to ensure that they have access to basic education, to stimulate scientific and technological research and artistic skills, and the protect and enhance the country’s cultural heritage. It’s responsible for primary, secondary and vocational education, libraries, archives and museums as well as the rights of all students at both public and private institutions. The Ministry’s mission is to provide inclusive, quality educational services that contribute to individual citizens’ development and that of the country.

As part of its ongoing asset management strategy, the Ministry of Education wanted to upgrade the internal processes involved in running the organisation, increasing the ability to accurately track and make processes more efficient and compliant with regulations. After an extensive scoping and audit project, it was decided that processes involving the Alta, Assignment, Transfers, Deregister by Donation and Auction functions, which together manage all assets from a variety of offices in Chile, would be incorporated in the eventual, central technology enhancement. One essential requirement in the project scope of work was to ensure operational accuracy and compliance with the International Public Service Accounting Standards (IPSAS).

The new solution would facilitate the flow of information throughout the organisation, allowing the Ministry to take control over its inventories, distribution and locations and also manage its physical maintainable goods. It would create and maintain a full suite of information about all building assets, the cost of maintaining them as well as record corrective and preventative measures and the ability to value the entire inventory in compliance with IPSAS, as set out by the Office of the General Comptroller. The Ministry also needed electronic signatures to be incorporated for further compliance. Daily operational processes were mapped out, including automated purchase recommendations based on availability vs demand, inventory inputs by readers, barcode control and geo-referencing.

In the future it was envisaged that the Department’s procurement processes would need to be integrated into the final solution. Before that could happen, in order to ensure that this project implementation and ongoing usage would be a success, a large number of users from around the country would need to be extensively communicated with and engaged in the resulting benefits of the operation.

Solution

The Ministry of Education issued an RFP to set out their operational needs and Microsoft Dynamics AX was chosen to fulfil them, implemented by Microsoft partner, AlfaPeople. The inherent capabilities of Microsoft Dynamics AX mean it is an easy-to-use, flexible solution and with this as a starting point, AlfaPeople could make customised changes to deliver on the organisation’s ambition for this project. Specific adjustments included the Asset Code Generation by group or category, as well as an inventory tool which was integrated to allow the individual identification of each asset in the fixed assets module. AlfaPeople also ensured that the Ministry’s employees could automatically calculate depreciation of assets and created a bespoke module which, based on received applications by the Ministry, could efficiently generate a recommended list of assets to purchase.

As a result of this project, the Chilean Ministry of Education would be able to access a whole variety of information anywhere, anytime, including:

• Where each of its assets is located, the history of changes it has undergone including any alteration to ownership, the value of its assets and anticipated depreciation as well as recommendations to purchase new assets;
• The ability to manage the accounting status and transfer of goods, plus send accounting information to the SIGFE system.

Crucially it would allow it to comply with a whole host of IPSAS rules and legal requirements governing Public Sector Equity, an area that AlfaPeople has extensive knowledge of.

Benefits

Sophisticated asset management

Using Microsoft Dynamics AX as its ERP system now means that the Ministry of Education can assign and effectively manage its portfolio of assets in a single, integrated solution. Full control of inventories, including traceability with access in real-time, has enabled management in each of the institution’s distributions and locations to correctly handle goods and build up a high level, accurate picture of its assets.

Regulatory compliance

The customised processes designed by AlfaPeople during the project integration have ensured that the Ministry is fully compliant with all the legal regulations stipulated by the Office of the General Comptroller. Operationally they have helped to improve process efficiency, enabling the strategic planning of all assets held by the Department.

Automatic code generation

According to a set of criteria defined prior to implementation, the Ministry of Education can now assign unique code for every asset nationwide, which Microsoft Dynamics AX delivers automatically from the region, division or operating unit at which the data entry is made.