Workflow/Process Management - Don't mention the paperless office
Electronic document workflow isn’t only about reducing paper. It allows you to re-engineer processes, achieve operational efficiencies and extend workflows to suppliers and customers, as well as breathing new life into legacy systems...
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You didn’t hear David Brent of fictional paper merchants Wernham Hogg going on about electronic document workflow (EDW) or process management? Mind you, business process management (BPM) had no place in The Office because efficiency isn’t funny. Reducing paperwork, increasing efficiency and building systems to fit processes are serious business. US-based management consulting firm Bain & Company says business process re-engineering is used as a management tool by more than 60 percent of the 960 international executives it surveyed in 2004 (see Bain & Company chart below), and worldwide BPM penetration shows no signs of slowing. Electronic document workflow is inseparable from business process management because there are very few business processes that don’t, at some point, produce a document. But that doesn’t mean BPM and pure document workflow are interchangeable. Workflow tools are often described as BPM systems to make them seem more versatile than they really are. Whereas conventional workflow tools allow collaboration by transferring work from one user to another, BPM systems not only combine the functionalities of workflow tools with process modelling, system integration business rules and process management functions. This makes them a powerful tool for operational staff and managers. The players ECN’s product, Viibe, was designed to let organisations collaborate on internal processes, as well as with suppliers, service providers and customers. For example, the Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) uses Viibe to manage the process through which health providers apply for access to its online e-Claims system. According to Rod Hall, managing director of Tranzsoft, which implements automated process management FlowBiz tool. “Processes dictate how a business runs, and if users have some power over what they do, it takes out drudgery, cost and inaccuracy. If you can map a process on a flowchart, you can dictate what that process is from a user’s perspective. FlowBiz takes that flowchart and makes it into an automated application at the desktop level.” Tranzsoft is currently implementing FlowBiz for a New Zealand telco, automating procedures involved in the activation of mobile devices that are currently largely manual. “Rather than having to go through a document that tells you what to do next, they’re taken through it online. The benefits are not only that we’ve automated it and captured it, but you can apply rules to each step. So if your job as a salesperson is to record all the things required to activate a device for a business customer, the system will tell you which person or group of people is required for the next task. We’ve measured something like 50 different manual hand-offs that will now be fully automated.” Aaron Cornelius, managing director of eCom, says its product Stellent automates and streamlines cumbersome processes by fusing people, processes and technology into an intuitive interface. “As with other BPM tools, we aim to improve visibility and manageability of the business process. But, unlike others, we can offer holistic view of users’ activity, covering not only interaction with raw information but also with documents they have to read or create. eCom’s work at Coca-Cola in New Zealand has resulted in a reduction of staff numbers in accounts receivable from 14 to eight, in spite of a 28 percent increase in work volume over the last two years. Also, document storage costs fell when eCom helped Coca-Cola to migrate from manual to a document management system. Coca-Cola says the system paid for itself within 18 months. Tim Thodey, CEO of Olympic Software says his company’s i-builder application was designed to help organisations digitise internal and external processes. He describes i-builder as a modular suite of integration and automation tools with an underlying workflow engine called i-path. i-builder might, for example, be used in a purchase requisition process to automatically ‘interrogate’ supplier systems and determine whether the required product is available, says Thodey. “Equally, the provision of an advanced shipping notification to a customer may need to include data not only from the distributor but also from the external transport operator, to provide an accurate delivery window to the end-customer.” Team Progress is the local distributor of the document management/workflow software products Liquid Office and TELEform. While Liquid Office is totally electronic, TELEform “scrapes” all the information from paper-based documents and pushes them into the workflow, says, Nik Key, business consultant. John Blackham, managing director of XSol, says his company’s XSol suite uses an adaptable architecture that allows organisations to transform their business processes directly into software applications that can be modified on demand. “It’s rather like a human skeleton, a pre-defined structure, and the user puts the flesh on the bones.” Configuration and set-up Key at Team Progress says Liquid Office is configured via a ‘drag and drop’ graphical user interface (GUI). “The beauty of this is that it puts power back into to the hands of managers rather than technical people,” Key says. While some computer skills are needed, Team Progress provides training courses that will fully equip any organisation to install and use Liquid Office in-house. “Another thing worth pointing out is that this is a zero-client solution, which makes it very easy to implement because all you have is a server application. You don’t need to put software in loads of sites, you just need a browser.” Hall of Tranzsoft says customers have a number of implementation choices for its FlowBiz offering. It can be provided as a managed service and operated by Tranzsoft via a virtual private network (VPN) link, just as an application service provider (ASP) might do. But Tranzsoft also offers to map organisations’ business processes and do the implementation for them. “The licence allows different uses of the application, so if you’re running it across your whole business and you have 200 processes, that’s how the licence operates. It’s entirely down to our relationship with the client.” The set-up time for Olympic’s ibuilder application also depends on the number of processes customers wish to digitise, says Thodey. “The value versus complexity equation often provides a clear indication of how the project’s scope is defined, and a number of factors influence this model, including the number of employees, the existing business model and the organisation’s geographic distribution.” Cornelius of eCom cautions that before implementing Stellent — as with any BPM package — organisations must clearly define their processes, document them, translate them into an agreed functional specification and transfer all intellectual knowledge of processes to the system. “The configuration is very quick, as it encompasses a graphical process design tool.” But Cornelius warns BPM deployment does require specialised experience. “Typically, eCom provides all the necessary resources including consulting, development, integration with third party systems and deployment. Once deployed, an internal business analyst can monitor and make changes to processes.” Blackham of XSOL says his company’s Enterprise System Logic (ESL) business model is used to capture an organisation’s structure, resources and the rules that will govern the automation of its processes without writing software code. While some users will have the necessary business systems analysts to configure XSol in house, Blackham says smaller companies usually use third party consultants. Integration with third party ERP systems As an internet-ready offering, says McCall of ECN, Viibe can operate in a standalone capacity, either in its hosted ASP environment or on-site. Adapters are available in and out of the commonly used enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, and directly into databases or custom-built applications. “Viibe is packaged with Microsoft’s BizTalk suite, which provides extensibility into legacy or partner systems.” Hall says FlowBiz integrates with everything from Oracle to SAP, and Tranzsoft is currently involved in a project to integrate FlowBiz with Siebel customer relationship management. “The other side of our business is integration, and the Tranzsoft gateway allows New Zealand Police to connect with all its suppliers, integrating Police’s SAP with probably 30 different systems and doing the data transformation in real time. So integration with other applications is not an issue.” While i-builder will stand alone, Thodey of Olympic says its intrinsic value is in its ability to integrate with other applications — and there are no restrictions as to the ERP applications it will integrate with, provided data can be exchanged with them at an application or database layer. Cornelius of eCom says BPM success can only be achieved through integration — otherwise you’re left with just another discrete system. “Integration with line of business (LoB) tools such as ERP systems is dependent on the platform — some are obviously easier than others. All of our BPM deployments involve integration with third party products and, in some cases, up to several for one process. We have integrated with all leading ERP, CRM and many LoB systems, including office productivity applications, and have off-the-shelf integration packs for all major platforms.” Key at Team Progress says it’s easy to integrate Liquid Office with “pretty much anything” because the software is standards-based – fully supporting XML, XFORM, SQL etc., and it ships with ‘connect agents’ that assist with the integration process. Does it ever pay to stay manual? Cornelius of eCom says any repetitive and definable process is suited to BPM. “eCom is having tremendous success within the financial services industry, with implementations in accounts payable, consumer finance (credit application processing) and insurance claims, new business and underwriting. I can’t think of a business that wouldn’t benefit from this technology.” Because organisations are unique in the internal and collaborative processes they engage in to deliver service to customers, Thodey of Olympic says i-builder’s analysis model allows a company to work with its customers to find out where to extract the greatest benefit. “As a guide, processes that are paper-intensive and which hold information time-sensitive to the effective delivery of services — either internally or in association with business partners — are an excellent place to start any analysis.” “What’s in it for us?” Return on investment is the measure generally used to justify IT expenditure, and ROI should be as much a component of a BPM or EDW proposal as it is for any other project. However, it’s often the less tangible benefits of EDW (such as improved customer service, operational efficiencies and higher user acceptance) that really make it worth the cost of implementation. McCall of ECN mentions a benefit likely to resonate around the boardroom table: ‘management by exception’. Rather than having management involved in every transaction of a business process, management by exception raises an alert (such as an automated email notification) when a job reaches an SLA threshold. As soon as there’s a risk that an SLA with a customer might be breached, the job is escalated and management notified. “They can put in place whatever response is needed to rectify this — an action plan, a resourcing plan, or simply proactively explain to the customer what’s going to happen,” says McCall. Key at Team Progress says the company has calculators which can predict the ROI, and some customers can get their money back it just three to six months. Liquid Office can also generate reports which provide feedback on how processes are performing, and where improvements can be made. “We are finding that it’s this fine tuning which is really saving the big money,” says Key. Hall of Tranzsoft says a key benefit of sound BPM is maximising your investment in existing applications and not merely replacing working technology. By focusing on the process, Hall argues, a company can tap into existing data, which extends the life of legacy applications, as well as laying the foundation for more rapid IT support for new and improved processes in the future. “Over time, you may make an upgrade choice that means more will go onto the FlowBiz platform and less onto an older application, or it might be the other way round. But either way, you’re going to future-proof your business.” Blackham at XSol says increasing focus on process could pose a major threat to application/ERP vendors, as well as some IT staff, as there will be less reliance on them and greater control in the hands of the users. As requirements change, changes can be made to the model and then reflected back into live automated processes. “It’s a huge difference from conventional software, where every feature or function must be pre-written.” This is why conventional ERP systems end up being very large, and less agile than process-based solutions, says Blackham. “Large applications are not suited to picking up little bits of information from BlackBerrys or mobile PCs, they are designed for people sitting at their desks and entering data into desktops.” Thodey of Olympic sees the key benefits of EDW in the increasing need for suppliers to provide visibility to their customers. “Electronic workflow can reduce cost, make information available in the right format at the right time, with the details to enhance customer service, operational performance and, ultimately, the organisation’s key performance indicators.”analysis.” Once it’s fixed, don’t break it “Technology alone will not guarantee success. Experience and capabilities are required when fusing people, processes and technology,” as Cornelius of eCom says. In your determination to improve efficiency, it’s all too easy to under-estimate the most vital workforce tool: your people. In spite of the late-20th Century hype about the paperless office, striving to rid your office of paper is likely to remain a fool’s errand for some time. And unless your employees are as incompetent as David Brent, making your business workerless is even less likely to please the bean-counters than banishing paper. For more information on BPM, workflow and electronic document management solutions and local case studies, including the company solutions mentioned here, visit: www.istart.co.nz/BPM-doc-mgmt-portal.htm To contact the people quoted in this article Hayden McCall Rod Hall Aaron Cornelius Tim Thodey Nik Key John Blackham |
March 2006 By Chris Bell
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Side-by-side sales pitch We asked our interviewees to tell us what differentiates their offerings from the competition “Firstly, it’s a completely integrated product suite combining full content management with an enterprise BPM package. Then, there’s the open application programming interface and provision of a high level of customisation. This equates to fast, risk-free implementations with rapid ROI and low cost of ownership.” “Viibe’s internet-centric architecture is a key differentiator, as many electronic document workflow solutions only operate within the firewall and it means we host the solution, lowering the upfront hardware and software costs. The Viibe front-end is intuitive and user friendly, so achieves high levels of end-user acceptance, which should not be underestimated in its impact on successful organisational change initiatives.” “i-builder is a framework built on industry-standard technologies and the ability to separate content from process; in effect, giving workflow content-recognition capability. The platform is entirely scalable, meaning entities can invest in a manner that maximises their return.” “Because this is not an application that requires high levels of coding, you can make it do what you want it to do. If you buy an application, you’re buying it to do a specific job, and you have to integrate it with the rest of the systems around you. This way, the ROI on future-proofing your business, by leveraging legacy and existing systems and making them more powerful, is continuous.” “With our software you can build solutions very quickly. You don’t have to rely on technical people who might take weeks, managers can do it for themselves – in a day.” “Our software can be used to create systems of considerable complexity. We actually create ERP-level systems. Others typically focus on workflow or integration but they are not delivering applications.” |
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