AIS

Advanced Info Service PCL (AIS)

Thailand’s largest mobile phone provider adopts Adobe LiveCycle solutions to improve processing job applications and human resource service requests

Innovation is key

Advanced Info Service PCL (AIS) is Thailand’s largest mobile phone operator with 24 million telephone numbers operational. The company holds a 50% share of the market and reaches more than 97% nationwide coverage. Its capitalization is approximately THB 264 billion (USD 7.8 billion), making it one of the top five listed companies on the Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET). AIS employs 8,000 people. With its reputation for innovative leadership and efficiency, the company is widely respected as one of the best companies to work for, attracting many of the nation’s most skilled professionals. To handle the processing of job applications, AIS’s HR Department searches for the most proven, cost-effective solutions that can integrate easily with its existing data management applications and platforms.

Pioneering automated data management

As a large enterprise and a pioneer in one of the most competitive industries, AIS realizes the importance of multi-integration of existing and new platforms. A champion of technological initiatives, the company is one of the first in Thailand to adopt Adobe LiveCycle solutions to streamline providing HR services. “We are a large enterprise running applications on many platforms. We are now using Adobe LiveCycle solutions to support Employee Self Service (ESS) for HR requests, enabling staff to access intelligent, electronic forms integrated with our databases”, says Mr. Somboon Martkamjan, Corporate Solutions Development Manager (CSDM) of Advanced Info Service Plc (AIS) Starting with the recruitment service, AIS’s HR Department implemented the Adobe LiveCycle solutions (Form Solution) for two major tasks: data input for job applicants and data retrieval for AIS staffers. Previously, the company encountered challenges when using HTML forms to capture data. The online HTML forms were not user-friendly because of the length in each page, forcing users to scroll down.

Cost-effectiveness, error-free

“The integration helps reduce workflow processes. In the past, we needed to manually process the paper work even though we used a web-based application”, says Mr. Martkamjan. Without having to put stacks of paper into files, the HR Department saves office space, time, and cost to source data. Earlier, when a manager or a staff member wanted to recruit a new officer, he would make a request to HR. The document would be distributed via paper. Because there was the risk of losing the paper file, extra copies were made, resulting in added costs and delays. With all information now managed electronically, data access can be done by levels of authorization and requirements. AIS spent approximately six months on the implementation. In the future, AIS also sees opportunities to expand the new HR job application processes to other businesses under the same group. “It would be extremely effective if we could leverage the same job automation application to other units within our parent company”, says Mr. Martkamjan.

Customer support and new technology take-on

AIS is an organization that is poised to look into new technology. But since HR service is not income-generating business unit, the challenge is how to ensure the most cost effectiveness without starting over new investment into a new system when changes demand. “We are quite satisfied with the support provided by iT Creative and Adobe. We feel well supported in our efforts to integrate the new system”, says Mr. Martkamjan. “We moved our forms processes from paper to HTML, but found that it still didn’t offer the convenience and efficiencies we wanted. We wanted to create more easy-to-use, automated processes integrated with our backend systems”, says Mr. Martkamjan. The integration with Adobe LiveCycle solutions allows the HR Department to add features to improve data retrieval and distribution to several business units without any indexing. For instance, data in XML can be displayed in specific forms in the process of sourcing. “Our ESS applications built on Adobe LiveCycle applications combine the benefits of automated workflows with the familiarity of paper-based processes”, explains Mr. Martkamjan.