Audi Gives Global Employees Simple, Secure Access to Shared Services Through a New Web Portal

To boost employee productivity, Audi used a Kofax solution to automate and speed up internal workflows by integrating services and tools from numerous sources into one convenient intranet portal. Audi’s business staff and its IT department appreciate how well it integrates internal and external applications.

In 2006, Audi sought to simplify its business processes across all company web properties by extending its intranet and integrating different processes and tools into a central portal. At the time, employees were using various freely available online services to perform their daily work, such as using travel and weather sites for business travel planning. While using these sites accommodated daily tasks, the process was evaluated as too slow and cumbersome. For example, inconsistent navigation tools and pop-up ads distracted staff and led to lengthened workflow times.

Audi’s project to address the situation focused on improving productivity and application efficiency by making these valuable services available through a central access point with a single, easy-to-use interface.

Audi envisioned a company-wide interface that could bundle all external and internal business-relevant services. Another criterion was ensuring online services that could not be securely accessed due to IT rules could be safely made available via the portal.

Kofax Kapow™ had already been successfully deployed in previous IT projects, so Audi trusted Kapow for its intranet portal. Audi was able to flawlessly integrate internal and external applications into the portal while complying with relevant security regulations. Kapow also allowed each application interface to be adjusted to the needs of the particular user.

In addition to various web services, the portal offered easy access to internal tools, such as various country databases that provide access to information and economic data on potential production sites or to sales offices across the globe. The solution also integrated with a custom-built application that was developed in-house at Audi to support sales planning.

Today, Audi’s internal portal platform encompasses eight single portals being used by about 60,000 people in more than eight countries—and all portal content is available in the respective local language

The intranet, which integrates more than 15 services and applications, has helped simplify and automate Audi’s internal workflow processes. Basic applications, such as travel planning, have been noticeably simplified—a positive change that is benefits employees and the company as a whole. The integration with the German Olympic Sports Association is an additional bonus for Audi’s staff members, who can now use the portal to search for public sports events across all company sites worldwide.

Audi is also seeing high user acceptance among Audi’s business staff and the IT department because requests are processed faster. The IT department can now integrate new services on demand within one to two weeks instead of one to two months.

Audi’s internal infrastructure was the only technical limitation encountered when building and deploying the new central portal. The experience with Kapow, however, was so encouraging that Audi is ramping up for a new portal project.

Based on the success of the project, Audi employees internally refer to Kapow as a truly “catalytic technology.” Audi plans to continue streamlining its business processes by creating and offering new services that allow for automated data utilization.