Solutions Blog

Western Australian iron ore company Karara Mining has hit paydirt with the teaming of Autonomy iManage WorkSite and Advantys WorkflowGen to provide a shared environment for storing business content. Documents, records, email messages and other media are consolidated in a central library, making them easier to find, share, and reuse.

Karara Mining is a joint venture between WA’s Gindalbie Metals Ltd and Chinese steel producer AnSteel, currently constructing the Karara Iron Ore Project: the development of the magnetite deposit at Karara. This offers known resources sufficient to support production for more than 30 years.

In early 2009, with some 80 employees already creating and interacting with its information, Karara had no information management strategy whatsoever.
They recognised the opportunity to mould the way their information management and business processes grew with exploration, construction and operations teams over the short and long term.

Read the entire article from Image & Data Manager

The WorkflowGen Business Process Management (BPM) solution helps a leading international manufacturer of office systems and related furniture products achieve total control of their system information.

Business Challenge
The client had been using workflow software since 2001, but over time the flaws in the system reached unacceptable levels. More specifically, there were frequently occurring functional errors, and these were having a detrimental effect on the company’s task performance and productivity. The system also lacked the capacity to support more recent servers, thereby forcing the client to work with outdated technology. There wasn’t even a way to fix the problem, since the required technical support was no longer available from their software vendor.

The bugs related to the malfunctioning workflow software represented a huge risk. There was a real concern that they could have lost system information, and that type of loss would have created significant financial risks to the company. Given these circumstances, they considered purchasing a new workflow solution capable of meeting the company’s short- and long-term needs.

WorkflowGen Solution
In their search for a solution, the client team evaluated three other software systems before turning to WorkflowGen. It was easy to try out the WorkflowGen package thanks to the free demo version available on the website. They found the software was so easy to understand that it gave the company a lot of freedom, and they didn’t need any outside assistance to grasp how WorkflowGen functions. Everything was explained clearly online, supported by videos to illustrate the explanations.

WorkflowGen has proven essential to the client’s efficiency and productivity by enabling a number of operations to be automated, especially the processes for entering orders, handling non-standard materials and managing ECR/ECOs (Engineering Change Requests/Engineering Change Orders). In fact, the solution is now being used throughout the company, from Engineering and Manufacturing to Purchasing and Customer Service.

Benefits

• WorkflowGen integrates seamlessly with existing systems—for example, information can be sent from Infor ERP SyteLine to WorkflowGen without any problems.
• It automatically routes tasks and notifications to the company’s various departments and/or suppliers, greatly increasing productivity.
• It simplifies the execution of tasks, especially in the complex area of Accounts Payable.
• It’s easy to obtain any required information via the company’s website. Responses are prompt and thorough.
• WorkflowGen’s reliability means that the risk of losing data (and the corresponding financial risk) no longer exists.
• It uses state-of-the-art technology.

Advantys and the Business Process Management (BPM) solution WorkflowGen help a company managing a 500km turnpike to streamline its clients request process.

Business Challenge
The company annually receives thousands of requests from its clients including contract changes, claims, details change requests, etc.

The requests are received via phone, email, fax and mail.  Because of the quantity and multiplicity of request types, sources and participants the handling and the monitoring was complex. To improve the quality of service offered to the clients and streamline the internal processes, the company decided to look for a solution that would enable it to quickly achieve the following objectives:

• design, optimize and execute the clients requests process
• integrate with the existing IT infrastructure (Directory, CRM, DMS)
• enable all the participants to access the system via a single entry point to record, handle and monitor the requests
• facilitate the action assignments to the appropriate participants to improve the response time
• implement a real time monitoring, track all the process data and benefit from KPI and reporting tools     

WorkflowGen functional solution
The operators who are receiving clients requests via mail or phone can initiate the process by using the WorkflowGen web portal. If the client has sent a mail it can be scanned and added to the process data. The operators are using web forms in order to capture all the details of the request. If the client is already listed in the company CRM system, its details will be automatically populated in the WorkflowGen form. The documents associated to the process in WorkflowGen can be automatically exported to the company's Document Management System. If the client's request lacks some information another operator will contact the client. Based on the nature of the request it will be automatically assigned to the appropriate participant in the organization depending on the business rules that have defined when designing the workflow. The different participants in the workflow are able to handle and monitor their actions to do via the WorkflowGen portal or via email. The requester can track the process status in real time. The supervisors can manage the requests and quickly identify the bottlenecks and eventually reassign the tasks to other participants.

WorkflowGen technical solution

• WorkflowGen Version 5 is installed on a Microsoft IIS server and uses  SQL Server 2005.
• Web Forms .NET et d’AJAX
• Synchronization of the WorkflowGen directory with the company's Active Directory via the directory connector provided with WorkflowGen
• End users configuration: XP 1024*768,  Internet Explorer 7
• Integration with the company's CRM and DMS

Benefits

• Dramatic improvement of the time spent to process a client's request
• The workflow portal facilitates the monitoring and eliminates the loss of information
• The process automation and the integration with the CRM and DMS eliminate the double entries and the manual search of information

www.lifeplansinc.com

 Testimonial
“I am a big fan of WorkflowGen. It is becoming central to how we define work processes, particularly when there are interdepartmental hand-offs and dependencies. “

Steve McIsaac
VP IT LifePlans

Mission
A wholly owned subsidiary of Genuine Parts Company (GPC), UAP INC. is a Canadian leader in the distribution, merchandising, and remanufacturing of automotive parts and replacement accessories for cars, trucks, and heavy vehicles.

http://www.uapinc.com

Testimonial
“WorkflowGen BPM has helped us transform a very leaky and inefficient process into one that is airtight. Money is being saved, accountability at all levels has greatly increased, and the entire process is working properly. Moreover, by eliminating the holes and inequities in the process, we have been rewarded with wide acceptance by our user community. We are very satisfied with the WorkflowGen BPM solution.”

Gaetan Mainville
Director, Information Systems, UAP INC.

The Challenge
UAP needed the ability to process the 1500 travel requests coming in yearly from their over 5000 employees across Canada. They were relying on a paper form to initiate the travel request, which was sent via internal mail to a manager for approval. This manual process was fraught with inefficiencies. Delays were being incurred using the internal mail system and often forms were getting lost before reaching their destination. Because there was no ability to track requests, there was the tendency to wait until the last minute to initiate a travel request resulting in higher ticket prices. Without approvals being enforced, some people would bypass the process entirely and call the travel agency directly to book their tickets. UAP was spending extra money and time trying to enforce a process that they had no control over.

The Solution
The implementation of the WorkflowGen BPM solution at UAP has given them the ability to completely redesign and automate their travel request process. The innate flexibility of WorkflowGen BPM enabled UAP to address their particular needs with an easy-to-use and quick to deploy solution that has received company-wide acceptance. Employees are making travel requests in a timelier manner, as the process is forcing two levels of approval before the request can get to the travel agent. Managers are notified by email that requests are waiting for their approval, and escalated when those approvals become past due. Once approved, the system automatically generates an authorization number which must accompany the ticket request to the travel agency. WorkflowGen BPM has provided UAP full visibility into the travel request process, resulting in the control and accountability that the client required.

Benefits

• Built-in service level goals have resulted in far fewer last-minute requests and thousands of dollars being saved, and the entire process can now be tracked through each stage for review and approval.
• Requesters are being more diligent regarding whether they need to travel at all, since they know they now need two levels of approval.
• Overall approval time has greatly decreased because managers know that the system is tracking timings, delays, and bottlenecks.
• It now takes an average of two days from the initial request until it is sent to the travel agency.
• The request form is easy to use and efficient, with all required information being entered before the form goes for approval.

Advantys and Business Process Management (BPM) solution WorkflowGen help a leading Insurance company preserve their data integrity and achieve financial compliance.

The Challenge
Having spent two years consolidating the company’s General Ledger, the Finance division of a leading Insurance company was beginning to see the fruits of their labor unravel as each new change request came in. Change requests were submitted through e-mail and entered into a centralized set of Excel spreadsheets. Due to this manual process, requests were either not being addressed, or changes were being made without proper authorization. The Excel spreadsheets were becoming impossible to maintain, were highly complicated, and there was no audit trail of changes–thus invalidating all the work that had been done to streamline the General Ledger structure. What they needed was an automated system that gave them the ability to dynamically change business rules as the approval process changed, and web based forms that could be built and customized easily, all without having to pay for extensive additional consulting. The Head of Data Management was tasked with finding a solution amongst the nine systems running across the organization that had a “workflow” component, but nothing was suitable – they were too big or too small, too complex or not flexible enough. They realized they would have to purchase a solution that gave them what they needed without breaking the bank.

The Solution
Enter WorkflowGen BPM by Advantys, which had the flexibility and ease of use that the client was looking for. The team at Advantys worked with the client to understand their issues and problems and presented them with workable solutions that they were able to implement quickly. Advantys provided assistance in the creation of web based forms which included several integration points with the client’s internal systems for data validation purposes. This work was performed on time and on budget by Advantys consultants. Ultimately, using WorkflowGen BPM for General Ledger change management has prompted numerous requests from other departments in the organization about different ways they too can use the tool to control their processes – a true measure of success!

Benefits

Implementing WorkflowGen BPM resulted in stringent process control and Sarbanes-Oxley compliance.

• Because change requests are now routed through approval channels, all the data in the General Ledger maintains its integrity.
• Total visibility into the requests coming in, including reporting and tracking of request status, in order to pinpoint bottlenecks, increase turnaround time and adhere to required services levels.
• WorkflowGen BPM highlighted areas where the process needed to be tweaked or re-designed, resulting in greater efficiency.
• Accountability has increased due to the extensive reporting available – requests were no longer just another e-mail lingering in an Inbox.

Advantys and Business Process Management (BPM) solution, WorkflowGen, helps the Graduate School of a major university streamline cumbersome grant processes.

The Challenge
A high priority for Graduate Schools is to manage and provide funding for student and faculty grant competitions that take place each year. Traditionally, the application and approval processes for these competitions are paper-based and thus highly labor-intensive and time-consuming. Since a typical grant application can go through as many as ten separate approval points, there needed to be a way to streamline the paper flow, and reduce the time taken to complete the approval process. The process also had to be more transparent in order to reveal bottlenecks and delays that were threatening the success of any particular application. Due to the wide variety of applications across the university, the process had to dynamically determine approvers based on application data. Finally, the solution needed to fall within the university’s strict budget limitations.

The Solution
The WorkflowGen BPM solution was implemented at the Graduate School in order to effectively turn grant applications into a paperless process. Advantys worked with the stakeholders at the university to review and re-design the process which resulted in eliminating duplication and increasing efficiency. The flexibility of the WorkflowGen solution enabled some of the university’s more particular requirements to be satisfied while limiting customization. The cost model of the solution allowed the Graduate School to stay within their budget limitations and still get what they needed to optimize their process. The implementation of WorkflowGen enabled the university to increase and streamline the process while significantly reducing errors and processing time . The time to process the application, from origination to final approval, went from taking several weeks to now being accomplished in a matter of days.

Benefits

• Visibility into all approval points, resulting in the reduction of delays. Approvals are now being obtained within hours of receiving notice.
• Central, web based secure accessibility of all documents related to applications, preventing lost or missing information that can slow down the approval process.
• WorkflowGen is compatible with any SSO (single sign-on) system, allowing integration with the university’s unique Central Authentication module.
• The WorkflowGen solution was fast and easy to deploy. The solution was in place and running within 60 days of installation.

http://www.mitsui.co.jp/en/

Mission
Mitsui (41,761 employees, 160 offices in 68 countries) taps an expanding global network to access strategic information and harness business engineering capabilities. Main businesses include sales, manufacture, export / import, international trade and services in the following fields: metal products and minerals, machinery, electronics and information, chemicals, energy, consumer products and services ―retail, foods, textiles & fashion, general merchandise and various services, and financial markets and logistics & transportation. Mitsui is also diversifying services, exploring for and developing natural resources, making commercial investments, developing technologies in new businesses and much more.

Testimonial
“By selecting WorkflowGen we were able to spend less than 12 months from the tool selection to the production. The development efficiency of the workflow definition and the .Net Web Forms is very high. The concept of the WorkflowGen product is excellent: it enables the focus on the workflow function, it’s robust design facilitates the quick implementation of new functions, it leverages the core Web technologies (.NET, XML, RSS Feed, Web Services, etc.), the degree of flexibility of development on the user side is high, the cost performance is also good.
The tool is easy to use, the design and various settings of WorkflowGen are intuitive and comprehensible. WorkflowGen offers convenient ready to use components. The user interface is refined, and the usability is high.
WorkflowGen facilitates the customization of all aspects of the workflows (routing, email notifications). Advantys the vendor of WorkflowGen showed flexibility and responsiveness to our specific requirements and the Help Desk support was quick.” .

Masaki Takahiko
Global Information Systems Enhancement Dept.

Business Challenge
As a global corporation Mitsui wanted to implement the next generation Business Process Management system in order to standardize trading subsidiaries business processes, strengthen internal control and integrate with the new ERP system (SAP).
The scope of the deployment was global with a target of more than 70 sites in North America, Europe, Asia and Oceania.
The initial roll-out included 7 companies in North America, 700 users, 500 requests/day and more than 40 processes.

WorkflowGen functional solution
WorkflowGen enables the users to easily perform 40+ business and accounting processes with a tight integration with SAP.

WorkflowGen technical solution
Mitsui has deployed WorkflowGen version 5 (with .Net Web Forms) including the following features:

- Real time integration with SAP (ECC 6.0)
- Real time synchronization with SAP of all 40 WorkflowGen .Net Web Forms.
- Real-time update processing from WorkflowGen to SAP
- Single Sign On via the SAP Enterprise Portal
- Task list display on SAP Enterprise Portal (via RSS feeds)
- Web Farm Architecture with load balancing
- Time zone Management (Time zone setting by user by location)
- User Synchronization (User information is synchronized with user database of authorization hierarchy at job starts)
- Form configuration synchronization with Add-on Tables
- Dynamic Selection of line managers

Benefits
Internal control strengthening
About 40 business processes were standardized with WorkflowGen to meet the requirements of internal control such as efficient process, strict access control, storing vouchers, and monitoring (internal audit).

Efficiency of communication between organizations
Instructions to SSC from remote locations of each company were integrated into WorkflowGen, and the whole business process became more efficient.

Real time integration with SAP
End users can access and register SAP data from WorkflowGen in real-time without logging on to SAP manually.
SAP menu and WorkflowGen menu were integrated into SAP Enterprise Portal, and thus users can access both functions without knowing the difference.
By defining user interface and workflow routing on WorkflowGen and business logic on SAP, the maintenance of the whole system became more flexible.

Fast implementation
About 40 workflow forms were implemented with effective functions and technologies including SAP integration in a short period of time (12 months).
Ease of development, customized training, and quick online support greatly contributed to the success.

http://www.uthscsa.edu/facilities/index.html

Mission
The Department of Facilities Management of the University of Texas Health Science Center At San Antonio provides services (maintenance, repair, etc)  to support more than 2.8 million gross square feet of space in buildings with a staff of 315.

Testimonial
"We are very pleased with our decision to purchase WorkflowGen.  We knew there must be a better way to process the thousands of paper work requests that we receive each year.  We initially looked at having someone write a customized program which turned out to be well over our budget.  We then looked at some of the larger workflow software companies and found that their software was expensive and required substantial programming to implement.  Once we “discovered” WorkflowGen, we knew that we were looking at something special.  Being able to design work flow processes using PDF forms, without formal programming, was extremely important to us.   Designing processes using WorkflowGen is relatively simple for an “end user” to do with out formal programming.   We plan to extend WorkflowGen processes to other areas since it is so easy to design and implement them quickly and economically.  We are very satisfied with the product."
Gary L. Tate
UTHSCSA Facilities Management
Assistant Director for Business Services

Business Challenge
The Department of Facilities Management was looking for a solution to better serve 3,000 internal clients who are submitting 6,000 work order requests per year. The goal was to reduce the volume of paper work while optimizing the response time.  
  

WorkflowGen Solution
Functional Solution
The Department of Facilities Management designed a workflow with WorkflowGen to enable any of the 3,000 authorized clients from anywhere on the campus to submit a work request. Depending on the requester and the nature of the work the requests are automatically routed to the appropriate supervisor (signature authorities) for approval and then routed to the Department of Facilities Management. All the participants in this process can track the status of their request in real time (requesters, approvers, facilities management operators) via the workflow portal. Event-based email notifications enable the requestors to be notified of the request's progress along the workflow process. The users can attach external files to the forms. Thanks to single sign-on, no separate username and password is necessary.

Technical Solution
WorkflowGen works on an IIS web server with SQL server as a back-end database. The authentication of the participants is done automatically thanks to an LDAP connector. An integration has been developed with PeopleSoft in order to dynamically retrieve the list of approvers depending on the requester and the nature of the work. The participants use their web browser to access WorkflowGen and populate PDF forms to submit their requests.

Benefits
Immediate productivity gains
The response time has been optimized from 2 days to 15 minutes.
The workload for the operators in the Department of Facilities Management has been reduced dramatically and their ability to monitor and retrieve process data has been maximized.
The clients enjoyed both the productivity gains and the possibility to monitor their requests in real time.

Fast deployment
The Department of Facilities Management has designed the work order process with WorkflowGen in 1 month.
A pilot was first organized for a few selected participants before the solution was rolled out campus wide to 3,000 people by sending a simple email. 

Ease of use
The Department of Facilities Management was able to design the workflow without programming except for the integration with PeopleSoft and LDAP.
No training was required for the end users who where able to access a user guide if needed directly on the Department of Facilities Management web site. 

http://www.brd.ro/brd-finance-ifn-s-a/

Mission
BRD Finance is the consumer credit unit of BRD group, a Romanian bank owned by Societe Generale. BRD Finance wants to be the most important consumer credit provider in Romania and operate with more than 300 employees and representatives in all national territory.

Testimonial
"WorkflowGen offered us a way to a better finance request tracking and reporting providing us necessary tools to understand and see how is our business going on at any moment in the past or today.
Due to huge volume of processing after 4 months from production launch we needed a solution to speed-up the system. Advantys and NESS Romania offered us a solution based on a secondary WorkflowGen site for archiving purposes that was freeing-up our main database, thus the production site was able to concentrate on the current business we have."
Crenguta Profir, Operations Manager .

Business Challenge
Approving credit request was a manual process that involved a lot of paper handling and storage. Reviewing dossiers or making reports was very slow with the impossibility to grasp an accurate present view of business.
A solution to overcome this situation was needed. Also budget limitation was imposed.
 
WorkflowGen Solution
Functional Solution
The implementation of WorkflowGen enabled the Backoffice team to define and launch first process in a couple of weeks. After the first process was in production and the management team was able to run sophisticated reports, another three processes were created then modeled within WorkflowGen.

Technical Solution
The SQL Server version of WorkflowGen Advanced was installed. ASP.NET forms were implemented. Archiving site was installed later on, using the same forms applications as the production site.

Associated documents, in no need to be modified, were uploaded into IIS virtual directory and they are available for later review either from the WorkflowGen production site or the archiving site.

A separate data warehouse database collecting the data from each workflow form was created for fast reporting. Also a bulk notification solution was implemented to model email notifications at predefined intervals, independent of the status of the processes.
 
Benefits
Immediate productivity gains
The implementation of the processes with WorkflowGen enabled the reduction of paper flows, and low added value activities.  Above all, it  dramatically reduced the average processing time per request. Reports that were difficult or impossible to be created before are now available in matter of minutes enabling better decision making process.  Currently the production site processes between 1000 and 3000 new requests daily, each staging through multiple actions that can be completed in one ore more days, based on particulars of the request.

Ease of use
The end users access WorkflowGen via their Web browser and launch their requests without any need for training due to friendly end-user interface. The unlimited user license of WorkflowGen Advanced allows BRD to expand its operations base worry free. In six months the number of users increased more than 100%.

Archival
The archiving site enables the organization to create a comprehensive archive with fast access to all closed requests and associated documents. The use of separate WorkflowGen archiving site also leaves the production database free of historical data enabling fast execution of processes anytime in the future.