Reference: Central Office for Examination Tasks (ZPA) – North-West – Success Story with cimoio
This reference comes from the Central Office for Examination Tasks (ZPA) North-West, which is a joint institution supported by the Chambers of Industry and Commerce of Berlin, Bremen, Hamburg, North Rhine-Westphalia, and Schleswig-Holstein, and it is headquartered in Cologne.
The organization is responsible for coordinating the creation of examination tasks by specialist committees for the nationwide intermediate and final exams of the Chambers of Commerce. Currently, this covers 42 commercial and commercially related apprenticeship professions.
In order to coordinate meetings with the specialist committees and other boards efficiently, the ZPA North-West required a solution with strong event management capabilities.
Testimonial
We would like to thank STL GmbH for their excellent work in further developing and digitalizing our requirements in cimoio Event, as their support has been invaluable. Moreover, working with the STL team has been a true pleasure. Every team member is professional, outstanding, and highly committed, and thanks to their efforts, we were able to achieve our goals on time.
With cimoio, our participants now have the ability to book and manage sessions online anytime and anywhere. In addition, the platform enables online invoicing, thereby streamlining all administrative processes efficiently.
We look forward to continuing this collaboration and to building a long-term partnership.
Challenge
The Central Office for Examination Tasks (ZPA) North-West regularly organizes meetings of its specialist committees, where volunteer examiners create examination tasks. While the examiners’ travel expenses are reimbursed by the ZPA, the processes had previously varied and relied heavily on manual work.
Moreover, the organization of these events, including necessary resources such as travel allowances, hotel accommodations, and conference rooms, required optimization. In addition, the ZPA wanted to implement software that could manage both event organization and travel expense accounting. Until then, this functionality did not exist in cimoio, which had previously been used only for internal training invoicing or client billing.
Solution
Since fulfilling individual customer requirements with cimoio is STL GmbH’s specialty, the team first compared cimoio’s standard processes with the ZPA’s processes. Afterwards, they implemented a workflow for entering travel requests during booking and for invoicing travel expenses after each session.
The concept of meetings with multiple participants is identical to training management. Therefore, implementing the ZPA’s functional requirements was straightforward. Moreover, cimoio already included accounting functions, so only travel requests needed to be recorded and forwarded to travel management.
In addition, participants were provided with an input option for receipts and travel times. The workflow was completed with a control function to verify completeness and calculation accuracy. Finally, payments are now generated as a SEPA file for seamless import into banking software.
Result
By switching to cimoio, the processes were fully digitalized and automated. On one hand, event registration and communication with travel management were standardized according to the ZPA’s travel policy. On the other hand, the invoicing and reimbursement of travel expenses were significantly accelerated, thereby improving efficiency and transparency.
Visit the official website of the ZPA North-West
The training catalog of the ZPA North-West is not publicly accessible and is reserved exclusively for committee participants. However, you can visit the website to learn more about the organization without any obligation.