Procurement Process Optimization Improves Efficiency and Employee Experience
Bahrain Mumtalakat Holding Company (Mumtalakat) is the sovereign wealth fund of the Kingdom of Bahrain. With over $18 billion in assets under management, Mumtalakat’s diverse portfolio spans across various sectors, including real estate, manufacturing, telecommunications, and more.
Mumtalakat is committed to supporting the nation’s economic growth through continuously optimizing, enhancing and growing its portfolio to deliver sustainable long-term returns. As an organization they are a lean group of over 80 employees.
“Our leadership has always wanted the company to be lean, so there has always been a focus on efficiency at every level of the organization,” said Chief Digital Officer, Husain Al Sabea.
In line with this strategy, Al Sabea saw the growing need for a rapid software development platform to fill gaps that could not be covered by existing systems or off-the-shelf options. Mumtalakat adopted the Mendix low-code platform in 2022 and has delivered 3 applications that are improving efficiency for procurement and legal processes.
Rapid and Flexible Development
Historically resource constraints made it challenging for Mumtalakat’s IT team to address the digitization needs of their internal teams. Furthermore, every department is subject to stringent industry and governmental regulations, making it difficult to find off-the-shelf platforms that can cover their custom business processes.
“A few years ago, I saw the need for a platform that would help us bridge the gaps that we have in business processes across the company. We have a number of systems in place that do a good job, however, there are always gaps,” said Al Sabea.
Mumtalakat evaluated a shortlist of leading low-code platforms, with Mendix and OutSystems as their final contenders. They conducted a 3-week assignment with two small internal groups to test both platforms head-to-head.
Mendix also met their required technical capabilities such as:
- Ease of integration with current and future systems in the Mumtalakat tech stack.
- Out-of-the-box and fully managed offerings for cloud and security.
- Reusable design, components, and integrations to further speed development.
“The less infrastructure we have to manage on our side, the better. I don’t have to have a dedicated team to manage all of those back-end pieces to make Mendix actually work. That is just handled by Mendix,” he added.
In early 2022 Mumtalakat began working with Mendix and establishing a team, hiring senior technology associate, Abdulla Alghaithi. Alghaithi came to the organization with traditional programming experience in Java.
“I had heard of low-code platforms, but I didn’t really believe in them because I started my career in development and coding,” he said. “I was always waiting for the caveat or the catch, but there wasn’t one. It is low-code, and it seriously works.”
Alghaithi spent his first few months with the organization learning the foundations of Mendix through Academy trainings and documentation. “The documentation is very well-done, and the community is quite interactive. If I can’t find an answer for something right away, there are a lot of people to go to which is quite helpful,” Alghaithi said.
Strategic Low-Code Positioning
When looking at gaps, the Mumtalakat team established a strong point of view on the projects that are best suited for Mendix. This is often based on current platform capabilities, the required levels of customization, and the intended lifespan of the solution.
“We look at each problem holistically and want to fully understand it first with no solution in mind,” said Alghaithi.
In some instances, the team looks to Mendix for stop-gap solutions to solve time-sensitive challenges in a resource-efficient way. For example, there might be a process that the procurement team needs support with today that will be covered in the rollout of a new ERP feature a year from now. In the interim, Mumtalakat can spin something up with Mendix.
“This is a scenario we are fine with. What is important is that we’re able to deliver value quickly to the business without having to worry that we’re taking so much effort on something that is a short-term solution. To develop something in just a few weeks that provides us value for a year – that is still a lot of value,” said Al Sabea.
Simplifying CEO Sign-Off
Mumtalakat’s first Mendix application was a use case of low to moderate complexity, but high impact and visibility.
Every week their CEO will receive several documents that require signature, which would previously be shared with him directly via DocuSign. However, he would have no visibility into whether the documents were already reviewed by legal or compliance and were actually ready for signature.
Time would be lost chasing team members over email, and the CEO could end up doing duplicate work if the incorrect version was signed. To make this process more standard and efficient, the team developed the CEO Cover Letter app. The application was developed in just 5 months and provides a review workflow that is integrated with DocuSign.
“Depending on the type of document, the appropriate stakeholders will conduct their reviews in the Mendix app, and then the CEO receives the final copy just like a normal DocuSign. He can reap the value of this new system without having to login anywhere new, so the CEO didn’t feel any difference,” said Alghaithi.
The application provides greater transparency for team members who can now see where a document might be stuck in the workflow, eliminating guesswork or repetitive email threads.
Securing the final CEO signature used to take a few weeks and can now be done in less than a day. Since launch, the application has processed over 400 documents for signature, saving countless hours for Mumtalakat’s employees.
Procurement Process Optimization
After a successful first application, the team started expanding to more complex projects. Mumtalakat’s procurement department has been a top contender for transformation with Mendix, as their processes are unique, fluid, workflow-oriented, and extremely regulated.
Prior to having a low-code platform, the procurement team had to establish a very “primitive” way of running their processes, working around an aging ERP system and conducting a lot of work manually between email and DocuSign.
Mumtalakat’s Head of Procurement, Khawla Al-Hosani, partnered with the IT team to bring the Tender Committee application to life in Mendix.
When Mumtalakat purchases any good or service, that purchase must pass through five team members – the tender committee – for approval. Historically, these requests would be sent through to an executive assistant who would reach out to the committee members and then wrangle their approvals over email.
The Tender Committee application was developed in 4 months and contains an automated approval workflow, a request log, and automatic reminders. “Now, nobody needs to keep track of who approved what because I have a log. I can just click and see who approved it,” said Al-Hosani.
Throughout the development process, the team had the flexibility to incorporate new, value-add features that weren’t part of the original project scoping. “We were able to take another very manual process – a bid opening form – and turned it into a checklist within the system. This made the diligence checks more effective,” said Al-Hosani.
The team is already enhancing their current applications to further reduce manual work across the procurement team. Instead of email threads chasing for follow-ups, Al-Hosani’s inbox now has messages from colleagues sharing how much more efficient the tender committee process is since launch.
Collaboration Fuels Innovation
Digitizing with Mendix has had a positive impact on the working culture within Mumtalakat. For the IT team, there is more trust from colleagues that they can deliver what is needed in a short timeframe.
Mumtalakat laid the foundation for faster development starting with their first Mendix application. They have developed a standard design language, established SSO, and created common integrations – all of which can be reused in future projects to accelerate development cycles.
Business and technical team members are now speaking the same language, helping them get to the right outcomes more quickly. “Now that certain teams are power users of Mendix, they know how to describe what they are looking for, which saves us weeks of requirement gathering,” said Alghaithi.
For the everyday users, work is just more efficient. Applications like the CEO Cover Letter and Tender Committee are built to be intuitive for any employee in Mumtalakat, making it easy for any team member to initiate a process, regardless of their tenure or background.
Building validation and logic into these processes also makes them less error prone. “There are different requirements for a procurement request that is above a certain amount for example. Once a user inputs the value, the system just adjusts to those requirements, so people don’t have to be worried about completing the wrong template or providing unnecessary information,” said Alghaithi.
Delivering Business Efficiency and Value
Beyond the positive reception from employees, Al Sabea feels confident in the impact that low-code has made on their bottom line.
“In our case, we are automating a certain set of processes. We can get a good idea of how much time those processes take per day, month, or year, and therefore how many employees we need to get them done,” Al Sabea said.
“With a simple calculation, we can easily agree that acquiring Mendix and developing an app will come back with significant savings after even just one year. It’s very tangible,” he added.
For example, the CEO cover letter process previously required up to 8 hours including manual follow-ups. Now, the entire process is fully digital and takes an average of less than 20 minutes with the CEO Cover Letter app, saving several hours of employee effort.
Today, the team is focused on enhancing their current portfolio and identifying new areas that are prime candidates to be transformed with Mendix. Business teams are happily dedicating resources to act as product owners for new projects.
“Once they started to see the value and saw things becoming real, that is when they started to imagine and ask what else we could do with Mendix. Then, more and more of their day-to-day work started to become automated in minutes,” said Al Sabea.
The Mumtalakat team is on their way to a more efficient and digital future one app at a time.