Solutions Blog

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.

http://www.koreanair.com/

Mission
Korean Air, owned by The Hanjin Group, currently includes 21 domestic and 19 overseas subsidiaries, with 33,500 employees.

Korean Air was looking for a software tool that would quickly automate the company’s unique in-house manual administrative processes at the ITDC* located in Los Angeles. 

Testimonial
"WorkflowGen is a (software) tool precisely designed to take care of automating any business workflow process. Wherever there is a form and a process, WorkflowGen can be applied very quickly to convert a manual process into a systematic process. Besides WorkflowGen’s simple and straightforward method to handle form and flow, it allows interfacing to external resources, at any step of a flow, a snap. For Business Intelligence (BI) reporting, we could integrate steps to write customized log records, which will serve as a base for all BI reporting."
Inkee Lee, Vice President and Deputy Director, ITDC for Korean Air. 
 
Business Challenge
Korean Air sales executives were seriously bogged down, trying to manage their travel agent incentive voucher system, a key component to the Korean Air client service process. 
 
WorkflowGen Solution
Functional Solution
As a part of their account management responsibilities, the executive sales staff at Korean Air was using traditional, semi-manual means to manage the administrative details and approval processes for handling travel agent incentive program.  Phone calls, emails, paper instruction forms, and physically “tracking down” associates, all had proven to be consuming far too much time, and not getting a integrated view of all the activities in time.

After researching the market for an affordable software solution that was powerful, but easy to use, Korean Air selected WorkflowGen®. Now, only days after implementing the software, each step of the travel agent incentive authorization procedure has been reduced to a simple, step-by-step, automated process.

Technical Solution
The SQL Server version of WorkflowGen® was installed, as well as a connector for the Active Directory to automatically synchronize and retrieve the user details. The Portlet module enabled Korean Air to populate the Intranet Portal with data that came from WorkflowGen® (actions to do, current requests, past due requests, etc). The SDK module enabled Korean Air to create custom workflow steps that provided connectivity to external data sources so forms could be pre-filled and action results could be utilized.
 
Benefits
Immediate productivity gains were delivered through efficiency, accuracy, and accountability. The new workflow expedited this important administrative process and begin accumulate data for automated executive reporting.

Fast Deployment
The Korean Air staff was successfully developing workflows shortly after the four day WorkflowGen® training.

Ease Of Use
After identifying WorkflowGen’s® ease of implementation and use, Korean Air is planning to take the application enterprise-wide, pending final review by the global IT director.

*ITDC (Information Technology Development Center) is located in Los Angeles and is part of Korean Air's IT department. ITDC acts as a new technology solution finder to improve the MIS environment for the corporation. 

http://www.deloitte.fr/

Mission
With 3000 employees in 80 branches, Deloitte France provides a complementary offer ranging from quality and information safety to financial transactions.

Testimonial
"After we defined the processes to automate, we launched the WorkflowGen solution within a week. The product is very easy to use especially thanks to the graphical implementation interface. WorkflowGen enables us to implement the processes without programming. It takes usually half a day to implement a new process. More than 200 processes have been identified for an optimization with WorkflowGen.
We also use this product as a gateway to our ERP applications because the workflow features provided by ERP systems are usually too complex and cumbersome to implement."
Gauthier Boulot, Web Department Manager .
 
Business Challenge
Already running an Intranet, several core applications and an ERP, Deloitte wanted to optimize procedures that were still processed manually or through unstructured e-mail flows (leave applications, IT clearance applications, conference call number reservation, salary advance applications, etc). Those procedures considered individually were relatively simple ones and neither justified a custom development nor the adaptation of an existing ERP type of application. However, all those procedures together corresponded to a significant operational cost due to the manual processing time they represented.  The business challenge was to automate and optimize those procedures, while complying with the existing IT infrastructure and seamlessly integrating into the Intranet Portal.
 
WorkflowGen Solution
Functional Solution
The implementation of WorkflowGen enabled the Human Resources Department and the IT Department to launch their processes within a few days.
Based on the rapid success of those first processes an enterprise wide study was made to identify all the processes that could be improved by WorkflowGen.

Technical Solution
The SQL Server version of WorkflowGen was installed as well as a connector for the HR ERP to automatically synchronize and retrieve the user details.
The Portlet module enabled Deloitte to populate the Intranet Portal with data that came from WorkflowGen (actions to do, current requests, past due requests, etc).
 
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.   Processes that usually took days to be completed are now completed in a few hours. The real time statistics module enables the Process Administrators to precisely monitor the activities and also measure the ROI. 

Fast deployment
After a simple installation on a Web Server, the Process Administrators are able to implement their processes after a simple 2 days training.

Ease of use
The end users access WorkflowGen via their Web browser and launch their requests without any need for training. The user friendly interface and the use of PDF forms ensure ease of use and instant adoption by the end-users.

“After reviewing demos of several workflow solutions, we chose WorkflowGen because it was the best value for our needs. It is extremely flexible and easy to learn and use,” said Ben Eastlack, Systems Support Supervisor, CDSD IT Department. He added, “We needed a solution that was modular in nature and easy to customize so that we can deploy it in stages throughout all our administrative departments.”

The Central Dauphin School District is a suburban community of approximately 83,000 residents with a current student population of 11,750 located northeast of the city of Harrisburg within the County of Dauphin in south central Pennsylvania. The school district is the 13th largest school district in the Commonwealth and is the largest of the 10 school districts located in the county.

http://www.smh.ie/

Mission
Saint Michael's House (Dublin, Ireland) provides a range of specialized day and residential healthcare services in 110 different locations to approximately 1500 people.

Testimonial
"We had developed our own in-house solution which highlighted the benefits of having a web-based workflow solution but quickly realised that the cost of developing a scalable and robust solution that was as powerful as WorkflowGen was not realistic.
We looked at several systems including solutions from Adobe but found that WorkflowGen offered a the best combination of functionality, ease of use and critically low costs both in the short-term and long-term. This decision has been strengthened by the excellent support that Advantys has provided."
Neil Kelly, IT Consultant.

Business Challenge
SMH is a large organisation nearly 1,500 employees and 110 offices spread across a wide area. To efficiently and effectively manage such a large number of employees and the infrastructure that supports their day-to-day operations it was necessary to put in place a web-based solution that would ensure:

• that information is captured only once in the organisation
• only the relevant participants are involved in handling the eForm, i.e. information is intelligently routed throughout the origination
• captured information is immediately available throughout the organisation - i.e. no waiting for post + database updated immediately upon approval
• reduced/zero error rates - no re-entering of information, logic built into eForm (e.g. If YES then skip to next question)
• allowing changes to be made to forms without the need for reprinting and distributing paper based forms (reduce costs)
• that correct procedures are always followed
• that there was an audit trail (important for quality)

 
WorkflowGen Solution
Functional Solution
WorkflowGen is used throughout the organisation. It supports operations in:

• Finance (Submission and approval of Mileage forms, Petty Cash, Invoices etc.)
• HR (Human Resources (Request and approval of Job Advertisements)
• IT (Creation and maintenance of security profiles and access rights for all employees - these require approvals from different managers + requests for new equipment and Office Applications)
• Health Services (Creation and updating of patient records - needs to be highly regulated and auditable - WorkflowGen delivers this. Also enables SMH to ensure that proper procedures are always followed)
• Training (Request and approval of Training courses)
• Health and Safety (Incident/Accident Reports, includes routing to different managers based upon severity of report)

Technical Solution
WorkflowGen runs on Windows 2000/2003 based servers with clients running Windows 2000 and XP Pro. Database is SQL Server 2000 SP3a.

WorkflowGen has been tightly integrated with several core solutions within SMH, these include:
- Microsoft Great Plains / Dynamics e.g. Approval of Month-end, expenses and salaries
- Business Objects Crystal Enterprise 10 e.g. granting access to specific data sets down to row and column level
- In house databases e.g. Controlling the creation and updating of key data
 
Benefits
Feedback from users
Very positive, the technology is so transparent that users rarely ask about the underlying technology and focus on the benefits that the eForms solution will deliver to them - this is a testament to the ease of use and good design of the WorkflowGen solution.

ROI
The ROI will be considerably greater than a purely financial one - it is expected that WorkflowGen will revolutionise the efficiency and effectiveness of the organisation by ensuring:

• that information is captured only once in the organisation
• only the relevant participants are involved in handling the eForm, i.e. information is intelligently routed throughout the origination
• captured information is immediately available throughout the organisation - i.e. no waiting for post + database updated immediately upon approval
• reduced/zero error rates - no re-entering of information, logic built into eForm (e.g. If YES then skip to next question)
• allowing changes to be made to forms without the need for reprinting and distributing paper based forms
• that correct procedures are always followed
• provide an audit trail (important for quality)

In summary the cost of the solution is only a small part of the benefits that WorkflowGen will deliver and therefore calculating a ROI does not fully capture the significance of the solution. We are expecting that once fully operational that the organisation will process literally tens of thousands of eForms every year - the solution will therefore pay for itself within months.

http://www.vincorinternational.com/

Testimonial
“In late 2005, Vincor undertook a search for an enterprise workflow engine to improve business processes managed outside of our ERP systems.  Our objective was to select a product that would be affordable, relatively simple to implement and maintain, adaptable, and fully web-enabled.
 
We selected WorkflowGen, supported locally by Intellera (Canada).  Since our selection, we have successfully designed and implemented our capital request and approval process, which had previously been handled entirely through paper and internal snail-mail.  The product has delivered as advertised, and we have been extremely happy with Intellera’s support.  Based on our experience to date, we plan to leverage our investment in WorkflowGen by automating several other processes, beginning in the HR and IT areas.
 
For time-to-value, simplicity of use, flexibility, and customer care, I would highly recommend WorkflowGen and Intellera as a solution of choice for any workflow automation need regardless of company size or process complexity.”

Maurizio Laudisa, VP IT, Vincor International

"Intellera and Advantys have provided TELUS Geomatics with excellent support throughout our implementation, and the product has lived up to its promises. We are well on our way to streamlining and improving our processes using WorkflowGen."

http://www.zf-trading.com/

Mission
With 1300 employees worldwide, ZF Trading is a strong company in the automotive aftermarket. The main brands are Sachs, Boge and Lemfoerder.

Testimonial
"While re-organising our processes, we had the desire to implement an application, that supports us in integrating them into our IntraNet quickly and easily. The tool had to be web-based, lean and very easy to use. We found all of these attributes in one solution named "WorkflowGen". It's a very practical tool with a lot of possibilities. Thanks to the SDK, even our existing applications (e.g. ERP, Microsoft Exchange) could be connected without any problems."
Stephan Hubner, IT-Coordination and Web-Applications
 
Business Challenge
Already running an IntraNet, several core applications and an ERP, ZF Trading wanted to optimize procedures that were still processed manually as paper or unstructured e-mail workflows (launch of new products, work-leave applications, training reservation, user appliance, etc). The business challenge was to automate and optimize those procedures, integrate them into the existing IntraNet and create the required interfaces to existing applications and the ERP system.
 
WorkflowGen Solution
Functional Solution
The Implementation is very fast and uncomplicated. Identification of existing or new workflows is an ongoing process that runs along side the implementation. For highest effectiveness, there are process administrators in the IT as well as in every major department.

Technical Solution
We are using the SQL Server version of WorkflowGen together with the Microsoft Exchange Connector to synchronize user data. We will switch to the Active Directory Connector in the future. The Software Development Kit is a useful 'add-on' to build interfaces between workflows and existing applications.
 
Benefits 
WorkflowGen is completely web based, so the integration into existing IntraNets can be done rapidly with all the assets of the thin client approach.

• Two days of training enabled the process administrators to build up the first simple processes within a few hours.
• Now there is the possibility of integrating nearly any existing or new application thanks to the SDK.
• Excellent support of Advantys for installation and implementation of the first processes.