Solutions Blog

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.

Process
The project manager wants to submit a purchase request. He completes the Investment Application form and forwards it to his/her manager. If the manager approves the application, it is then sent to the finance controller. For amounts over $15,000, and when pre-approval has been given by the controller, the CEO will also have to approve the application. The process varies depending on the amount involved.  
  
Form
Here is an example of a .Net Web Form.
The layout can be fully customized by using Visual Studio or the free Visual Web Developer 2005 Express. The Web Form just needs to contain all the fields required for this process.
The sections of the form can be displayed based on the each workflow action and based on the profile of the user connected.  
 

Workflow with WorkflowGen
1/ The employee opens his/her browser and logs on to WorkflowGen.

2/ He/she clicks “New application” and selects “Investment Application”. By clicking “Launch application”, he/she then accesses the “Application follow-up form”.

3/ In “My to-do list”, he/she clicks “Complete” and the form corresponding to the selected application is displayed. The employee completes the form and clicks “Send form”.

4/ Now back at the “Application follow-up form”, the project manager can choose to whom the application is to be sent. By clicking “Assign this action to a person”, he/she can select the person from a list and click “Assign”.

5/ At this point an e-mail message is sent to the selected person (the manager) with the subject line reading “One new action has been assigned to you”.

6/ By clicking “View action”, the manager accesses the “Application follow-up form” and goes to “My to-do list”. By clicking the action assigned to him/her (here, a validation), the form opens again. The manager can also fill-in the appropriate areas to approve or refuse the application, before clicking “Send form”.

7/  In turn the manager will assign an action to the next participant by selecting him/her the same way the project manager did. In this example, the finance controller has been notified by e-mail.

8/ The finance controller will launch the action he/she has been assigned and the form (which has been completed and validated by both previous participants) will open. The finance controller can then approve or reject the investment application.

9/ There are now two alternatives:
- if the finance controller approves and the amount requested is less than $15,000, the application is closed and the project manager is notified by e-mail.
- if the finance controller approves and the amount requested is greater than $15,000, the application is forwarded to the CEO for final approval.
Of course, should the finance controller reject the application – whatever the involved amount – the project manager is notified by e-mail that the application has been unsuccessful.

10/ Let us take the example where the amount requested is greater than $15,000 and the finance controller has given his/her approval. The CEO will then be informed by e-mail and will in turn begin the validation process. Thus, it is the CEO who closes the application (by approving or rejecting it). Whatever the decision, the project manager will be notified by e-mail.