Aer Lingus is implementing Advanced Air Approvals, a suite of mobile apps from Advanced Business Solutions, in order to drive efficiencies in procurement. The anticipated go-live is December 2014.

Advanced Air Approvals will interface with Aer Lingus’s existing Advanced e5 financial management system, enabling senior managers to approve or reject transactions from Apple and Android smartphone and tablet devices while they are on the move.

Advanced Air Approvals will enable the airline to manage its finances by allowing users to drill down into e5 for further information to determine whether to approve an invoice without a corresponding purchase order.

The airline’s 50,000 transactions each year, such as requisitions, invoices and new supplier requests, will appear as a list in Advanced Air Approvals and can be categorised by type.

Authorised staff will be able to approve transactions even when they are offline, with the app holding the transaction and then processing in e5 when a network connection becomes available. The real-time app also has the functionality for managers to attach notes if a transaction is rejected.

Integration with the organisation’s finance system is managed via Advanced’s cloud-hosted Air Administration gateway. This will enable the airline provider to restrict the app usage to specified users and monitor levels of activity to ensure high levels of security and protect sensitive financial data.

“Investing in mobile technologies is a key part of our IT strategy to maintain a competitive advantage,” said John Greene, head of data governance and enterprise reporting at Aer Lingus. “We saw an opportunity to extend this by streamlining our back-office processes to offer greater mobility and visibility to senior staff that spend time out of the office.”