Company Background:

Atos Origin is a leading international IT service providing company. It is a France based

PCMM level 3 company. It is Europe’s third largest firm. It provides IT services to its clients
worldwide in field of consulting, system integration and managed operations in order to
improve the effectiveness of client’s goals. It is spread across 40 countries globally. It has
around 78,000 employees worldwide. Its client base is very wide e.g. Petrochemicals,
infrastructure, healthcare, asset management etc. It is the official IT partner for Olympics
games till 2016.

Atos origin India is one of the main global sourcing centre for Atos Origin Worldwide. It has
crossed the count of 8000 employees across more than 8 offices in 5 major cities in India.
Most of the business processes in Atos Origin are carried out in an onshore-offshore model of
working. This would mean that the bidding of the projects is usually done by the main
countries of the organisation across the globe. The project is then executed by the team
usually distributed in two major parts. The first part is usually based in the main country
where the project is to be delivered. The second part of the team is usually out off shored to
India. This approach helps the company to reduce the operational cost of the project resulting
into better profits. Regular visits are conducted by team members of the two parts to each
other for the offshore team to visit the onshore location andto work with the onshore
counterpart team for some duration. The same thing also happens vice versa. This not only
increases the bonding and understanding between the offshore and the onshore teams but also
not to mention the improvesments in the quality of the work. At more than few occasions
these visits could extend beyond few months. In none of such cases the transfer of payroll
happens for the employee. i.e. \sSuch employees would be still continue to draw their regular
salaries in their host countries and are usually given provided with a daily living allowances
paid to them in the currency of the visiting nation on a monthly basis. They will not be put
under the salary system on the onshore country. For this onsite duration a number of factors
need to be taken care of the employee. The daily living allowances paid to the employee are
decided based on various factors like country of visit, grade of the employee, duration of visit
etc. A Foreign travel expense statement has to be sent by the employee to its offshore
manager. This has to be sent on monthly basis to the offshore location. It should state details
of his monthly expense at the onshore location. It has to undergo a series of approvals after
which the employee is entitled to claim for the living expense in the onshore location for the
next month. The expense statement has to be first approved by the employee himself. A soft
copy and a hard copy of this self approved expense statement is sent by the employee to the
offshore manager. The soft copy is sent by email and the hard copy is sent via post. The
manager in the offshore location then evaluates the expense statement and if its proper
according to him, then he approves it and he forwards it across to the senior manager. The
senior manager evaluates it and once he approves it, its sent across to the delivery manager.
The delivery manager then compares the expense statement with the previous expense
statement of the employee and if not much changes have occurred in the new expense
statement, then he approves it and sends it across to the senior delivery manager for further
verification. Once the senior delivery manager verifies the expense statement, the approved
statement is then sent to the finance department of the organisation. The finance department
then reloads the account of the employee with the next month’s allowance. An email is then
sent by then finance department to the employee keeping the project manager, the delivery
manager and the senior delivery manager in loop. If at any stage any of the manager’s are not
in consent with the expense statement, its then sent back to the employee for further
verification and justification of the expense of that month. This is a very frustrating process
for the employee since this whole process is done on paper work and not on an online system.
So at times the whole approval process takes about a month or so depending on the
availability of the managers in the office. The employee corresponds via emails to then
managers in the offshore location. So it becomes a bit tedious when the managers are not in
office in the offshore location. Many a times if the hardcopy is misplaced at any approval
stage, then the employee is supposed to initiate the whole process from the scratch again.

Business Process Reengineering:

Business Process Reengineering is suggested to streamline the process in the organisation in

order to get the foreign travel expense statement approved by all the levels of management.