Sistema FIEC automates back-office processes and delivers 151% ROI with Pipefy

To meet the growth and revenue targets set by senior leadership, Sistema FIEC had to review and optimize more than 500 internal workflows spread across the institution. Much of the operation still ran on manual, paper-based processes, which created rework, a heavy reliance on physical forms, and little visibility into the status of each request.

The central bottleneck was that every automation request funneled through the IT team. With requests pouring in from departments across the organization, each process-improvement ticket took weeks, and in some cases months, to reach the top of the queue. The workflow software in place at the time still required technical know-how to operate, which kept business teams dependent on IT and left the back office unable to keep pace with the expansion the company was after.

The Planning department went looking for a no-code platform that would give business analysts the autonomy to automate processes without writing code. With support from Profectum, a Pipefy partner, Pipefy was rolled out using agile methods. Over 10 weeks of sprints, the team mapped its workflows, prioritized the ones with the greatest impact, and decided what could be automated inside the PMO Back Office program.

Standardization and automation replaced manual tasks with centralized workflows. Fleet inspections, once logged on paper and prone to error, moved to tablets, with photos and data consolidated in the platform and reports that now inform decisions. In HR, meal and food allowance requests for the more than 1,300 employees, previously filled out on physical forms, were moved to a workflow available on the intranet, eliminating manual processing.

With real-time visibility and centralized reporting, the business teams began building and adjusting their own automations as needs arose, without opening a ticket with IT.

Automating 70 processes in three months freed teams from repetitive work and redirected that time toward activities that matter more to the institution’s operation. Real-time visibility and centralized reporting gave leaders a concrete basis for their decisions, while the 151% ROI, calculated on saved hours alone, proved the project’s financial return in its very first phase.

Adoption spread well beyond the initial areas. Legal, Accounting, Procurement, Finance, and Engineering took ownership of their own workflows. With more than 200 people directly involved, the back office gained the capacity to absorb new demands at the pace the growth plan called for, without routing every change back through IT.

Founded in 1950, the Federation of Industries of the State of Ceará (FIEC) brings together SESI, SENAI, and IEL and is part of the National Confederation of Industry (CNI). With more than 1,300 employees in Ceará, it works to strengthen industry and advance the state’s socioeconomic development, serving companies, students, unions, and the general public through technological education and innovation.