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avisor – in a nutshell

What is avisor and what does it do?


Common overview

With avisor, it is possible to create audit-proof billing of external services based on framework agreements and a standard service catalog between clients and contractors. Continuous data exchange ensures transparency and an excellent overview of project progress and its billing.

Instead of continuously issuing individual tenders, avisor operates according to a defined service process. The prerequisite for this is the establishment of framework agreements with each partner company, based on standardized services. This eliminates the need for constantly requesting and comparing quotes, thereby saving resources such as time and money.

The Process

The repeated process of awarding and commissioning third-party services be a major drain of time and resources. avisor is designed to streamline this process, lowering internal and external costs and improving the quality assurance process.

awato built avisor to help you streamline the way your business location handles maintenance orders. The system uses IT technology to deliver a standardised service process for the awarding and invoicing of goods and services between service partners. One key factor: your service partners are integrated into the process.

Imagine that a junction box malfunctions within your company, necessitating immediate repair work. You already have an outline agreement in place with the company responsible for this type of work at your company. Imagine the ability to initiate the service quickly and smoothly, while still ensuring gapless, audit-compliant records.


Cost Reduction

Instead of assigning individual orders on an ongoing basis, you can work with a set of pre-defined service processes. The first step to achieving this is an outline contract with each partner company, based on standardised services.
This involves the negotiation of a price for a given volume structure expected within a specific time frame, allowing the services to be called up as needed during that period.

This offers several benefits: With the general conditions clearly established, the work is initiated transparently as individual orders. And because the orders can be bundled, you often receive a better price than when ordering the services a la carte.

This saves time and money. The partner companies work at a fixed negotiated price and can be commissioned on a case-by-case basis quickly and easily at the press of a button. The partner companies document their services rendered, and you can then approve those claims electronically for settlement. Over time a valuable database is created, with all individual activities ready for comparison with one another. The partner companies also benefit from this process. They too can collect data over time to help them fine tune their estimates and tenders. The outline contract offers the partner companies legal security as well.


Audit-ready Handling

All operational processes are documented gaplessly, with the option for constant access to all data at any time.
A flexible security concept allows for the definition of view and editing rights for different users and user groups. This ensures that outline contracts can only be composed and released by buyers, while the technical coordinator has the authority to award orders and perform the technical acceptance review of rendered services. The approval guidelines also allow for implementation of the ‘four eyes principle’, i.e. approval of a document requires sign-off by at least two persons.

Within your company, approvals are based around the four eyes principle: An order coordinator has the authorisation to approve settlement of claims from service partners valued at up to 5,000 EUR. A manager must sign off on service entry sheets of values above that. avisor’s inbox shows each registered user the documents awaiting approval.


Reduced Complexity

The major benefit of integrating service partners into a standardised service provision process: reduced complexity for all involved:

• Standardised services are defined once
• General conditions are negotiated and set on a yearly basis
• Orders are assigned at the press of a button, based on defined general conditions
• Electronic entry of services performed by vendor
• Email exchange of data between service partners
• Electronic approval of claims by one or more persons
• Statistical sampling used to boost efficiency even further
• Enables comparison of all services, independent of service partner

The savings from these process optimisations are enormous. In over 10 years of working with our partners from industry, we’ve found that avisor generates savings of between 10% and 20% of the total sales with those service partners.


From BOS to SSC

The process for efficient service provision is built around Standard Service Catalogues (SSC). In practical use, these differentiate themselves significantly from a Bill of Quantity (BoS) as defined by the GAEB (German Joint Committee for Electronics in Construction).
A GAEB-BoS involves an exhaustive description of the scope of the order, including the volumes, prior to provision of the services. The goods and services for a project are defined and individually put out for tendering to different service partners.

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Picture 1

The use of AVA software (the German abbreviation for the bid invitation/award/acceptance process) for order processing is highly time and personnel intensive. The structure of this data makes it difficult to make comprehensive comparisons between service partners, or to analyse the use of service items in different departments. The massive costs can often be justified by the scope of the projects and tight deadlines required for implementation.

Maintenance services by contrast are high-volume products. Repairs must be undertaken in a timely manner, and have a strongly repetitive character.


Ready-made SSC

Ready-made SSC
The basis for evaluating services and deliveries is the standard service catalogue. The Standard Service Catalogue (SSC) collates the services and deliverable items for the ordering party based on the unit prices calculated for a volume of 1. We’d be glad to arrange through our partners for ready-made SSCs, already tested in practical use, for implementation in your avisor.

The items of these SSCs include prices that are constantly updated based on ongoing market conditions:

• Process control engineering
• Earthworks
• Sewerage conduits
• Subterranean pressure pipe lines
• Drainage work
• Traffic route engineering
• Landscape engineering
• Insulation work on technical equipment
• Brickworks
• Concrete and reinforced concrete work
• Carpentry work
• Roofing and waterproofing of roofs
• Plumbing
• Plasterwork and stucco
• Scaffolding
• Process engineering (pipeline construction)

• Tiling and sheeting work
• Pavement work
• Joinery work
• Parquet work
• Fitting work
• Metal construction and fitting
• Glazer work
• Coating and paperhanding
• Floor covering
• HVAC systems
• Heating plant and central water heating systems
• Gas, water and waste water installations
• Electric cable and conduit installations in buildings
• Lightning protection

Please feel free to contact us for more information on these or other areas.


Streamlining for Greater Efficiency

The standard services catalogue allows for commonly repeated activities to be given a standardised definition and assigned a unit price. The end result is a list of standardised services whose prices are easy to compare.

1 m² floor or ceiling coating for one wall
1 unit – special transport
1 m – crepe masking tape

The unit prices are derived from a standardised invoicing charge, allowing for more effective comparison within an SSC. Technical services are collated into service types, with separate line items for wages and materials as well as mark-ups for hazardous or unpleasant work and supplemental devices.

Standard service catalogues are a tool for invoicing services when the precise volume will not be known until the project is complete.


Reduced Time Overhead

Standard service catalogues rarely change in terms of their content. The tender by the contractor involves the statement of a correction factor for the complete SSC. These conditions then serve as the basis for the outline contracts negotiated by Purchasing with the service partners and are settled for a specific validity period (such as a tariff period) or for the duration of a specific project.

Based on this outline contract, you can call up all individual services quickly and easily.

Your service partner reports the services using the standard services catalogue that you provide. The end result: gapless documentation with less time overhead for all involved.

During the technical approval process, you can take advantage of an optimised sampling procedure that offers a randomised selection of service entry sheets within specific general conditions that you can define.In the area of building construction, for example, 10% of all service entry sheets to be approved are checked on site. All other service entry sheets receive the release for settlement after a formal review for adherence with the planned order volume.


User-friendliness

Our avisor software has a simple, easy-to-learn user interface that supports you throughout the entire process. The menu structure and keyboard layout will be familiar to Windows users, making it easier for your employees to get up and running fast.

Yet for all its simplicity, this software adjusts flexibly to your needs, making it suitable for use in various parts of your company:

• Pipeline production
• Pipeline construction
• Process control engineering
• Building Construction
• Civil Engineering
• Insulation work
• Corrosion protection
• Staging

avisor offers both German and English as its interface languages. Program updates are automatically applied for your service partners via the Internet.


Optimal Data Exchange

avisor offers numerous interfaces for the exchange of data: The BBH96 and BBH97 interfaces facilitate the exchange of standard service catalogues, outline contracts, individual orders and service entry sheets, and document attachments in compressed form, with an option for encrypted ZIP archives as well. These formats can be sent and received quickly and conveniently via email.

Due to the SSL email encryption of each provider a separate e-mail account for avisor is compulsory.

The KE86 interface for tenders using service catalogues based on GAEB allows you to create your standard service catalogues using so-called AVA (Tendering – Job Awarding – Invoicing) software. Service entry sheets with REB chain of dimensions can be read in or exported in the D11 format.

Additional interface programs are also available for real-time links to SAP and the integration of CAE systems.


The ‘Dual Principle’

You award an order to a partner company via automated email in avisor. Optional data attachments such as isometric drawings or PDF documents are compressed together with the individual order data. Where desired, the files can be sent in encrypted form to the contractor.

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Das duale Prinzip

The contractor receives the prepared individual orders via a standard Internet connection using avisor. It documents all listed goods and services with the line items from the standard services catalogue specified in the outline contract and uses the avisor email function to send its service entry sheet to your coordinators for acceptance of services rendered.

During read-in of the received service entry sheet data, all line items are completely recalculated based on the unit prices and conditions stored in your system.


Gapless Cost Controlling

By using avisor, you’ll build up a valuable database for comparing individual activities with one another. avisor offers flexible options for querying and evaluation, including the ability to export the results to external programs like Microsoft Excel.

An add-on program called ViewPoint facilitates the creation of custom reports based on user-defined criteria.

• ABC analyses explore the relevant SSC line items down to the last detail
• Juxtaposition of estimated order values and calculated totals
• Revenue per service partner and time frame


Product Support

We support you with roll-out, including integration into your existing IT landscape and support for your users. We can plan, organise and carry out training sessions either at our premises or yours.

We offer the following range of services to support you:

• Process analysis
• Software development
• Application consulting and support
• User training sessions
• Hotline
• Database analysis and statistics
• Presentations
• Migration of external data into the SSCs During one recent corporate roll-out of avisor, we trained 120 different employees. The training organised into groups of 10 employees, with sessions lasting 4 hours each.


Scalability

avisor is designed to grow with your needs, whether you’re servicing 5, 50 or 500 users. Different profiles with different read, access and release rights can be created for all users and user groups in your company. Because users must log in, all work undertaken in the system generates a detailed record.

A configuration management system allows adjustments of screens and definition of rules for specific user departments. The current largest installation of avisor at one single site involves a central Oracle database for 1,143 active users in 27 different maintenance groups.