Automated Workflow to Accelerate Large Organization's Internal Payment Process

Situation

The customer is an industry leader that develops advanced medical devices for healthcare professionals around the world. Figures from 2008 show that the company stands at number one as the leading company in arthroscopy, advanced wound management, trauma and clinical therapies.

The customer’s global infrastructure continues to expand each year. It currently operates in more than 30 countries and generates annual sales of $3.8 billion US dollars. The company entered China market in 1994, headquartered in Shanghai and set up several Global Business Units (GBU) and factories in Beijing, Guangzhou, and other cities.

Until recently, the company’s operation in China has implementated its internal payment request and approval processes heavily relying on paper, facsimiles, and telephone. Policy-based workflow processes driven back and forth between GBUs, regional centers, and China headquarters were difficult and inefficient. In an effort to eliminate the potential mistakes caused by manual work and miscommunication, MDT InfoTech was chosen to develop a web-based workflow application based on Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007.

Inefficiencies of Paper-based Manual Processes

Information Services and Technologies department at our customer had looked into the manually-driven internal processes for internal payment request and approval. “A payment request containing basic payment information usually needs to be reviewed by several individuals in turn and sometimes approved finally by General Manager,” says Hill Lee, IS&T Manager at the compny. “For example, when an employee in GBU in Chengdu submits a large-amount payment request, it should be reviewed by regional manager in Guangzhou, Financial Director in Beijing, and then General Manager based in Shanghai. Signatures were required at every step along the way, and the document is e-mailed, faxed, or even hand-delivered to the requisite approvers.” This manual process takes up to 2 weeks to complete and is a headache for everyone.

For some urgent payment request, the original applicant has to constantly make phone calls to trace the review status. But sometimes they event do not know who is the current reviewer. For facsimiled paper, reviewers sometimes cannot identify information contained in the payment form.

These issues centered on the same business pain: the inability to easily access and share information among distributed staff members who are involved in a manual workflow. The resulting inefficiencies and wasted time cost the company in lost productivity and extra hours spent away from staffers’ core competencies.

To eliminate the inefficiencies and facilitate collaborations among geographically dispersed GBUs and offices, MDT InfoTech was selected to develop a SharePoint Server 2007 solution to solve these problems.

Re-defining Policy-based Workflow Processes to Be Automated

Consultants at MDT InfoTech started from an in-depth analysis on the customer’s existing manual processes as well as related company policies. “These internal processes involve almost every GBUs and departments of the company,” says Deping Wang, VP of Enterprise Solutions at MDT InfoTech. “We have arranged several war room meetings with key individuals and teams that are actively involved in the payment processes. The purpose is to accurately define the customer’s internal payment approval processes with added value of our knowledge of commonly-adopted best practices.”

After 4-week in-depth analysis and discussion with the customer, we have re-defined 7 workflow processes for payment request and approval based on the customer’s company policy:

• Travel request process
• Re-imbursement request process
• Imprest request process
• Temporary loans request process
• IT procurement / Administrative purchasing process
• Compliance process
• General payment request process

These workflow processes are clearly described in Requirement Specifications. Other related terms and definitions described in the specification include:

• General concepts and terminology
• Organization structure topology
• Permissions and individual privilege
• 3rd-party information list
• Reporting format
• System requirements

…

Architecture Topology

MDT InfoTech designed the system based on Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. It can be seamlessly integrated with the customer’s multiple domain controllers based on Windows Server 2003 and SQL Server 2005. End users’ privileges are rooted in Active Directory, which enables cross-domain access and avoided duplicated user information configuration and maintenance. The following illustration shows the system environment:

Custom SharePoint Workflows

To enable automated workflow processes that comply with the customer’s payment policy is the key function of our solution. MOSS 2007 contains several built-in workflow templates to manage basic approval processes. Simple workflows can be designed based on MOSS built-in workflow engine that is developed using Windows Communication Foundation (WCF). End user can also use a free tool, SharePoint Designer, to customize the workflow without coding. For more complicated workflows, our developers used Visual Studio to create custom workflows.

In our solution, various payment request forms in the workflows are managed in MOSS form libraries. For each of the 7 workflow processes, there is a corresponding form library. Once a new request form is submitted online, it will trigger the corresponding workflow process automatically and the form will be sent to each approvers in turn based on pre-defined policies.

InfoPath Forms to Contain Payment Information

After evaluation on the customer’s existing paper forms, developers at MDT InfoTech designed form template using InfoPath. Each InfoPath template corresponds to a workflow process. When end users need to submit a payment request, they choose a proper form template online and fill in required information.

Verification on input data is executed automatically based on pre-defined policies. Incorrect payment request is not allowed to submitted. Some data dependencies are also defined in the InfoPath template. Drop-down lists, check boxes, basic value calculations are widely used for easy form filling. It has saved users’ time to complete payment request form with higher information accuracy.

Privilege and Permission Control

A few SharePoint user groups are created to meet the customer’s high security standard. Only users assigned with proper privileges can access specified forms and lists, and take actions including document reading, approving or rejecting a request, viewing approval history, etc. Major user groups include:

• Users – only allowed to submit payment requests and view approval status and history of themselves;
• Managers – can approve or reject payment requests submitted by subordinates, able to view status and history of subordinates;
• Compliance Committee – members can approve or reject requests submitted to Compliance Committee, approval by all committee members is required;
• Administrative Purchasing Staff – allowed to submit Administrative Purchasing Process;
• Administration Assistants – responsible for booking flight tickets, accommodations and update payment request information when the request is approved;
• System Administrator – full privilege for system update and configuration

Solution Summary:

1. General information, including user information, various organization units, request forms, etc., is stored in SharePoint Lists;
2. Request form templates are designed in InfoPath forms;
3. Additional user groups assigned with customized permissions can be created and organized as SharePoint groups besides the Organizational Units in the Active Directory;
4. Workflow engine provided by MOSS is enabled so that IT staff from the customer are able to customize the workflow without much coding;
5. Various request forms are created by Microsoft Office InfoPath 2007 and published to MOSS 2007, which enables end users to submit payment request online using Internet browsers;
6. Workflow is initialized automatically based on defined policies when user submits an online request;
7. Tasks in list view enable payment approvers to see all the on-going payment requests. An approving task will be generated automatically when a request is submitted and the task will be assigned to the requisite approvers in turn based on the approving result.