Solutions Blog

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. 

Process
A customer files a claim; one of the sales department employees handles it and initiates the adequate form. If it is a pricing error, the claim is directly sent to accounting to create a credit.  For all other types of claims, the request is sent to the Quality Control (QC) department for analysis. If the claim is about a nonconformity already processed, the QC analyzes the cost of the claim and sends it to accounting. If the claim is about a nonconformity unprocessed until now, the request is sent to the relevant service employee who will plan and determine a corrective action. After processing this part of the workflow, QC analyzes the corrective action cost and sends it to accounting, which will impact real costs of the nonconformity correction. To end the workflow, the request is sent to the QC, who will close and verify the efficiency of the corrective action or will simply complete the workflow by filling in the date when the claim has been processed.
 
Workflow with WorkflowGen
1/ The employee opens his/her browser and logs on to WorkflowGen.

2/ He/she clicks “New request” and selects "Customer claim”. He/she then accesses the “Action follow-up form”.

3/ He/she clicks "Initiates” and the form corresponding to the selected request is displayed. The sales employee fills in the form; claim order number and customer information are automatically retrieved from a database. Then the employee clicks "Submit form".

4/ If the claim is about a pricing error, an email notification is automatically sent to a person in the accounting dept, with the subject line reading: "One new action has been assigned to you". By clicking "Consult the action", he/she accesses the "Follow-up action form" and goes to "My actions to do". By clicking the action he/she has been assigned, in this case "Create" a credit note, the eform is displayed again. He/she fills-in the appropriate areas.

5/ If the claim is not about a pricing error, the QC is automatically notified via email with the subject line reading: "One new action has been assigned to you". By clicking "Consult the action", the QC accesses the "Follow-up action form" and goes to "My actions to do". By clicking "Analyzes claim" , the form is displayed. The QC can then analyze the request. According to the nature of the claim, he/she will complete the form if it's about a non conformity already processed or unprocessed until now. Then he/she clicks "Submit form".

6/ If it is about a nonconformity already processed, the next action will by handled again by the QC. The action to perform is "Analyzes cost". After having filled in the form, the QC clicks "Submit form" and an action is assigned to one of the accounting staff.

7/ If the claim relates to an unprocessed nonconformity, the  service manager chosen by the QC is notified via email that an action was assigned to him/her. The service manager clicks "Consult the action" and accesses the "Action follow-up form" and "deal with non conformity". The form is displayed and the manager reads the claim and the analysis done by the QC. Then he/she proposes a corrective action by filling in the appropriate fields and clicks "Submit form".

8/ The QC is then notified via email that one new action was assigned to him/her. This new action is "Analyses cost" of claim's processing according to his own analysis or the corrective action proposed by the service manager. He/she clicks the action's name and the form is displayed. He/she fills-in the "Real costs processing" section. Then clicks "Submit form".

9/ The accouting person is notified via email that he/she has to impact the real costs of claim's processing and to create the credit note if needed.

10/ Once the accounting action is performed, the QC is notified via email that he has to close the customer claim, so he/she launches "Closes" in WorkflowGen and fills-in the fields corresponding to the corrective action and verification of its efficiency. He/she fills in the date in the form to indicate when the claim was officially processed. To finish he/she clicks "Submit form".

11 / The sales department employee who launched the customer claim process and the service manager who performed the corrective action, are notified via mail of the request end.