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.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.

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.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.