Telekom Malaysia Berhad (TM) and Tenderin Sdn Bhd (Tenderin) recently signed a Collaboration Agreement for the realisation of Lapasar, one of TM’s ‘Go Digital’ initiatives to transform its traditional procurement process to a digital platform.
Lapasar is an online Business-to-Business (B2B) procurement platform developed by Tenderin, a local start-up company, that allows TM to purchase general office supplies for its business operations. Lapasar offers comprehensive e-procurement activities for business organisations such as TM by providing an online and on-the-app purchasing platform with the convenience of real-time price comparison function and other functionalities such as ‘shopping-cart and checkout’ functions, commonly used in Business-to-Consumer (B2C) marketplaces.
Lapasar also provides TM with digital procurement without compromising the corporate governance, while increasing efficiency and convenience of procurement operations within a controlled environment. TM is the first company in Malaysia to experience and benefit from this application and this digital initiative is set to improve the productivity of TM employees via simplified and faster procurement process.
Ahmad Azhar Yahya, Chief Digital Officer, TM and Mohamad Mohamad Zain, Chief Procurement Officer, TM signed the Collaboration Agreement on behalf of TM while Tenderin was represented by Thinesh Kumar, Chief Executive Officer, Tenderin and Lakshman Das, Chief Operating Officer, Tenderin. The signing ceremony was witnessed by Datuk Bazlan Osman, Acting Chief Executive Officer, TM.
Commenting on the collaboration, Bazlan said, “This collaboration demonstrates TM’s openness and willingness to support technology start-up companies like Tenderin, by working together through the journey of testing and refining digital solutions and innovations. This is among our continuous efforts to enhance our operations and efficiencies, including procurement processes with an e-procurement platform such as Lapasar.”
“We are indeed excited to become the first company in Malaysia to benefit from this application. It is worth to note that we have recorded a reduced cycle time for Procure-to-Pay and Delivery processes by 80% with Lapasar. With the use of Lapasar, the manual Purchase Order (PO) issuance and approval have been eliminated, and the purchase of supplies made via online at cheaper prices, have resulted in noticeable cost savings at our end. All these are in line with TM's Performance Improvement Programme 2018 (PIP2018) to improve our cash flow and increase our productivity.”
Initially implemented in pilot stages, TM has started utilising Lapasar since October 2017 for online purchases of Office and Pantry Supplies for Klang Valley area and its scope was later expanded further to nationwide in March 2018. Recently, Lapasar has introduced the Lapasar apps which can be downloaded by TM’s business units and subsidiaries from Google Play, App Store or TM digital apps hub, hub@TM.
With the collaboration, both companies will be exploring opportunities towards creating better savings, increasing efficiency and providing more opportunities to local vendors to grow their business further, throughout the country via digital, hence delivering an integrated digital lifestyle for TM and rakyat Malaysia.
