Business Needs
- Expedite the routing and approval of departmental and corporate information.
- Provide data on these forms in a web accessible form with readily available reporting.
- Decrease the cost of handling and storing forms based data.
- Drive process-orientation further into the enterprise.
Solution
- Deployment of the free Windows SharePoint Services (2.0) Portal
- Integration of the ShareVis DocEx and FormEx workflow products
- Discovery of 60+ workflows that could be automated
- Implementation of a dozen high-value low cost workflows
- Delivery of managerial dashboards via ShareVis reports and SharePoint Views.
Benefits
- Expense Reports, Purchase Orders, Absence Request, Payroll Change Notice, Employee Requisition, and Tuition Reimbursement are now submitted, routed, approved, and reconciled in a fully electronic fashion
- Reports by department, general ledger code, date, and numerous other attributes are readily available via secure SharePoint views to authorized management. Approvals generally go through the system in less than one day.
- Significant reduction in cost of information transmittal and storage.
The Project
Overview
Active Aero Group, headquartered in Belleville, Michigan is the leading premium transportation charter service in the United States. SPS Workflow recently completed a 6-person month consulting arrangement with Active Aero to bring a greater degree of process-orientation and electronic forms processing to their enterprise.
Inception
This 6 person-month effort began with the purchase of the ShareVis DocEx and FormEx products for document management and forms automation, as well as the installation of the free Windows SharePoint Services (WSS 2.0). “What impressed me about the ShareVis system was how quickly a demonstration of our Purchase Order system was able to be given,” said Christopher Healy, president of Active Aero. “Beyond this, the cost was well below competing systems, with what appeared to be a lower cost of back-end integration” said Christopher Healy, president of Active Aero Group.
Windows SharePoint Services was selected as the portal technology in principally because it housed the ShareVis workflow engine, but also because AAG has a primarily Microsoft-centric IT infrastructure, and SharePoint’s reporting capabilities and information sharing technology could be leveraged out-of-the-box without any additional financial outlay.
Discovery
With the system in place, SPS Workflow consultants interviewed key subject matter experts (SME) in key departments including: Accounting, Human Resources, Marketing & Sales, and Flight Operations. The “discovery” activity quickly unearthed dozens of potential processes that could be automated. From this list, three key workflows were determined to have a high-value to the company: Purchase Order approval, Expense Report approval and processing, and Absence Reporting.
Key to this was the ability to disseminate the capabilities of the system to as many departments as quickly as possible.
Development
Development was rapid but with numerous iterations. One of the key benefits of using ShareVis is that it leverages InfoPath as the Forms designer and a proprietary graphical workflow designer. Forms and workflows were able to be created quickly and executed within SharePoint, which allowed SMEs to understand the process and relate undisclosed or better understood business rules.
At the mid-way point of the project, the majority of these corporate-wide workflows were in place, as well as several other workflows such as the Advanced Passenger Information System and Crew Load Reporting. Key non-IT “superusers” were also trained in and the development of workflows.
SPS Workflow consultants worked in collaboration with ShareVis client service representatives to extend the system to make workflow development and execution more efficient. “The ShareVis team is outstanding in their ability to service their customers,” said Russell Blaesing, president and Principal Consultant of SPS Workflow.
Elaboration
The remainder of the project was spent refining the developed workflows and their associated reports, and continuing the collaboration and training of the super-users. Workflow development continues at AAG on numerous forms in several different departments. This work is expected to continue indefinitely as more departments take advantage of the system capabilities and further refine their implemented solutions.
Conclusions
Active Aero now has an advanced SharePoint portal housing SharePoint workflows for review and approval of Purchase Orders, Absence Requests/Reports, Expense Reports, Tuition Reimbursement, Payroll Change Notices, and Employee Requisitions. We also implemented workflows for their FAA Advanced Passenger Information reporting, Crew Load, and other more enterprise-specific business processes.
"SPS Workflow helped us better understand, document and streamline our administrative processes.
The ShareVis system and the SPS Workflow methodology allows us to discover and graphically depict these processes, and then ‘publish’ them, without any programming,” said Mr. Healy. “And I particularly like the fact that our subject matter experts can now do many of their departmental forms and workflow development on their own."As a result, AAG now enjoys:
- Speed of Information Flow. Their business forms are now approved and processed in hours, not days or weeks.
- Visibility. Managers, directors, VPs and the President can now easily participate in the review and approval processes online, and determine where work items and expenditures are in these processes.
- Cost Savings. The company has realized significant cost reductions in paper transmittal, duplication, storage and retrieval.
- Reporting & Search. ShareVis workflows control the flow of information into SharePoint at which point out-of-box SharePoint reporting and search capabilities can be leveraged for ease of managerial decision making.
- Continued Workflow Development. Several internal (non-IT) SMEs can now use ShareVis to create their departmental workflows.