Talented professionals at SriLankan Airlines proved their capabilities yet again when the Oracle Procurement and Inventory System was installed with in-house expertise at the Equipment and Services Procurement Department, without any help from outside the company.

"The Company saved millions of rupees by doing the installation in-house," said Dehan De Silva, Manager Equipment and Services Procurement. "It took about five months of planning and installation. The teamwork was excellent and everyone took pride in their work."

A large and comprehensive team from several departments worked on the project together. From the IT Division were Manager IT Business Systems Chrisantha Silva, IT Project Manager Ruwan Amarasekera, Senior Software Engineer Prabath Thilakasena, and Software Engineer Hemantha Kariyawasam.

From Equipment and Transport there was Equipment and Transport Manager Gamini Waas, and P and E Planning Supervisor T. Chandraratne.

From Procurement there was Manager Commercial Procurement Annabel Weerabangsa, Inventory Control Manager Jaliya Gunatilleke, Commercial Procurement Manager Kamal Fernando, Equipment and Services Supervisor Kamal Dissanayake, GSE Procurement Supervisor Chinthana Devapriya, Assistant Superintendent GSE Stores Gerald Gunesekere, Storekeeper G. Premalal and Dehan De Silva.

The new system controls the inventory of Ground Support Equipment (GSE), purchasing, and payment to suppliers.

"It’s one system that controls the entire process. A lot of time can be saved since we don’t have paperwork any more. It’s one of the leading Enterprise Resource Planning systems in the world," said De Silva. "We received a lot of support from Chief Financial and Administrative Officer Neeraj Kumar, former Senior Manager Procurement Shyama Nandasinghe, and Head of Procurement and Logistics H. L. Rikhye.

Earlier, the Finance Division changed over to Oracle, as did Commercial Procurement. SriLankan’s IT engineers learned from these installations which were done with the help of external consultants, and can now do it themselves. (Monara)