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.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.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.