Solutions Blog

Process
A Dept.Supervisor wrote an internal procedure and he needs to have it validated. He forwards the procedure to the QC Manager who will verify its compliance. The QC Manager may approve or not the procedure application or return it to the Dept.Supervisor for reviewing. In case of an approval and if he thinks it's necessary, the QC Manager will forward the procedure to the Director who will decide of its official use. 
 

Doc-Approval interface
When a process requires the approval of a document, workflowgen uses the Doc-Approval User interface.
This user-friendly tool enables the user to upload and visualize a file for validation purposes.

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

2/ He/she clicks “New application” and selects “Procedure validation”, by clicking "Launch a new request" He/she accesses to the "Action follow-up form".

3/ Then, He/she clicks "Launch action" and the "Doc-upload" interface appears . The action He/she has to do it's to "Upload" in WorkflowGen the procedure to be validated . He/she clicks "Browse" button and  selects the procedure (Word document, PDF etc etc...) in his/her local files. Then He/she clicks "Submit" and the file is automatically uploaded in WorkflowGen. At this point an e-mail message is sent to the QC Manager with the subject line reading “One new action has been allocated to you”.

4/ From the notification e-mail, the QC Manager can consult his action and go to WorkflowGen. So, He accesses directly  to the "Request follow-up form". The action he has to do is "Approve" the procedure proposed by the Dept.Manager. In "My actions to do", He clicks "Approves" and accesses the "Doc-approval" interface. The proposed procedure is displayed in the interface, the QC Manager can read it and choose between 4 options to define the request continuation: Agreement, Refusal, Forward, Review.

4.1/ If the QC Manager chooses "Agreement":
The procedure is approved and will be used. The Dept.Supervisor is notified by email his/her request is closed and the procedure approved.

4.2/ if the QC Manager chooses "Refusal":
The procedure is refused. The Dept.Supervisor is notified by e-mail his/her request is closed and the procedure refused.

4.3/ if the QC Manager chooses "Forward":
The QC Manager has approved the procedure and estimated it required the Director agreement. So the Director is notified by e-mail that an action has been assigned to him. From the e-mail, the Director accesses WorkflowGen and launch his action, here "Approve". The "Doc-approval" interface appears, the procedure is displayed on the screen. The Director has two options: Agreement, Refusal

4.3.1/ If the Director chooses "Agreement":
The procedure is approved and will be published. The QC Manager and the Dept.Supervisor are notified by email that the request is closed and the procedure approved.

4.3.2/ If the Director chooses "Refusal":
The procedure is refused. The QC Manager and the Dept.Supervisor are notified by e-mail his/her request is closed and the procedure refused.

4.4/ if the QC Manager choose "Review":
The QC Manager wants the Dept.Supervisor to review his procedure. The Dept.Supervisor is notified by e-mail and accesses the "request follow up form" in WorkflowGen. He can consult the comments or/and the file the QC Manager would have attached, then he launches his action "Review". The "Doc-upload" interface is displayed and the Dept.Supervisor can upload the procedure he will have modified. Then He will click "submit the form" and again the QC Manager will be notified by e-mail that he must approve the procedure (the workflow loops back to step 4)

In any case, the QC Manager may add comments to explain or justify his choice and/or upload additonal files in WorkflowGen.

To complete his action, the QC Manager clicks "Submit the form".

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.

Process
The employee completes the expense report. He sends it to the supervisor, who approves or rejects the expense. When the expense is approved, it is forwarded to the accounting department, which gets the expense reimbursed.
You can enhance the process by using an upload action to attach an invoice receipt to the expense form.
 
Workflow with WorkflowGen
1/ The employee opens his/her browser and logs on to WorkflowGen.

2/ He/she clicks “New request” and selects "Expense report”. 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 employee completes the form and clicks “Submit form”.

4/ At this point an e-mail message is sent to the employee with the subject line reading “One new action has been allocated to you”. In fact, in this process the two fisrt actions are done by the requester. He/she clicks "View action" in the email.

5/ He accesses to the "Action follow-up form" and clicks "Upload". The second action he/she has to do is to "Upload" the invoice related to his/her request. He/she clicks "Launch action". eFormGen Doc-Upload is displayed, he/she clicks "Browse" to select the invoice file on his computer. After having chosen the right file, he/she clicks "Send the form".

6/ By clicking "Assign this action to a person" list, He/she assigns the third action to his/her Supervisor.

7/ An email message is sent to the Supervisor selected with the subjet line reading "One new action has been assigned to you".

8/ By clicking “View action”, the Supervisor accesses the “Action follow-up form”. He can consult the joined invoice by clicking "Invoice". By clicking the action assigned to him/her (here, a validation), the form opens again. The supervisor complete the appropriate areas to approve or refuse the application, before clicking “Send form”.

9/ There are now two options:
- if the Supervisor doesn't approve the expense form, the process is closed and the employee is notified by e-mail.
- if the Supervisor approves the request, it is forwarded to accounting, which gets the expense reimbursed.

10/ In the case of Supervisor approval, the accounting participant is notified by e-mail  that an action was assigned to him/her. By clicking "View action" he/she accesses "Action follow-up form". He/she consults invoice receipt then he/she clicks "Creates" and the form is displayed. When the reimbursement check will be created he/she will fill the field "Proceed" "YES" into the form and will click "Submit form".

11/ An email notifies  the employee that his/her request is closed and he/she will be refunded soon.

http://www.rouen-formation.fr/

Mission
Based in Rouen, RFE is a SME specialized in the education of the young
people, and in the professional training in IT, personal development and languages.

Testimonial
"Within our ISO 9002 certification project, WorkflowGen is the tool we were looking for to automate our procedures quickly. Thanks to the ease of use of WorkflowGen we were able to implement the quality procedures with a minimum of communication and training for more than a hundred of our trainers who, from now on, use the quality processes in a transparent way ".
Alexandre Martini, General Manager.
 
Business Challenge
During the ISO 9002 certification project, RFE was looking for a solution to digitize the heavy volume of paper procedures and to automate the repetitive administrative tasks.
 
WorkflowGen Solution
Functional Solution
In 2 weeks only the Quality Department was able to go live with the first processes (requests for paid-leaves, constitution of training files, teaching declaration of incident, etc). All processes being described by the certification project, it was then very easy to create the PDF forms and to implement the processes with WorkflowGen.

Technical Solution
The technical implementation was very fast because WorkflowGen had the same environment has RFE's : Intranet with IIS, ASP, SQL Server and Active Directory. 
  

Benefits
Fast and easy to use
With limited manpower and a tight deadline, RFE was able to set up WorkflowGen and it's first processes in just 2 weeks for more than 100 users. No programming and user friendly modules were the key factors of success.

Quick Return On Investment
The ROI is estimated to be reached within the first year because of the productivity gains on administrative tasks.  The implementation of WorkflowGen enables a single person to manage the quality program and procedures for the whole company.