Web Workflow Lets SBA Get Down to Business

By Penny Lunt

Imagine writing a letter to a government agency and getting a reply the next day. The Small Business Administration (SBA) has been capable of such quick turnaround since installing a workflow system in December. The dramatic improvement in response time shows how one simple technology can increase the efficiency of a large enterprise.

The SBA, like many organizations, had trouble responding to written correspondence. Employees handling the mail would route incoming letters - some from members of Congress - to the appropriate SBA office, each of which had its own way of tracking correspondence. If employees were away from the office or neglected to check their mailboxes, letters went unanswered. It could take months for letters to go through the proper channels and get a response.

Members of Congress require timely responses to their requests, and laws demand similar high levels of service for ordinary citizens. The Freedom of Information Act, for instance, requires government agencies to respond to requests for public records within 10 working days.

To speed and track correspondence, SBA turned to e-work, from Metastorm, Severna Park, MD. Now incoming letters are scanned to PDF files using a Hewlett-Packard scanner and ScanSoft's OmniPage scanning and optical character recognition software. Clerks handling the incoming mail choose the subject of the letter from a pull-down menu in e-work.

Resource Locator

Vendor: Metastorm
Severna Park, MD,
410-647-9691, www.metastorm.com
Product: e-work 4.1
Description: Web-based workflow that works with Microsoft Outlook and Novell Groupwise. No client software necessary. E-work Designer generates Dynamic HTML forms that work with 4.0 and later browsers. Includes a drag-and-drop graphical forms designer. ODBC connectivity lets you read and write to existing data from external database sources. Users and roles can be defined in a Novell NDS Schema.
Strengths: Easy to install and design workflows with almost no training. Public Web access lets anyone log in from the Internet to initiate workflows. E-work 2000, to be released in October, will add features including XML support, server-side scripting and additional form field types.
Weaknesses: Has not been proven in a large enterprise yet. The largest installation to date is 1,000 seats. Recently added support of Oracle 8i will help.
Competitors: Workflow products from FileNet, Staffware, iComXpress, Lotus Notes, Eastman Software, others.
Pricing: Server starts at $4,995

Using predefined rules, the software sets the priority of the letter, how long it should take to craft a response, and who should carry out the task, including all levels of approvals and signatures.

The designated person in the appointed SBA office receives the document in an inbox accessed through a Web browser. Soon the SBA will route documents via Microsoft Outlook, which is deployed throughout the organization. Employees initially objected to getting more email, but since the pilot test with 30 employees has been in place, they've realized that the sooner they receive the work, the sooner they can get it done.

Employees respond to correspondence by mail, telephone or email. Metastorm added the telephone and email options at the request of Diane Gannon, chief of the productivity enhancement staff in the SBA's Office of the CIO. "A lot of times I can respond by email within 20 minutes, and the correspondence is closed," she says.

SBA was initially attracted to e-work because it uses PDF format and standard Web browsers. "We haven't had to purchase or install any additional software," says Barbara Ebersole, team leader in the SBA's CIO office. "It has a common front end that people were already using."

Gannon says e-work was easier to manage than other products the SBA looked at. "One thing you have to consider about a product like this is administration," she says. "You don't just put it online and assume it will work on its own. You have to add users, back it up and troubleshoot."

The system cost less than $25,000, including the server, scanner and training. "Considering the man-hours it took to handle paper correspondence under our old method, I think we'll see a return on that investment in the first year," Gannon says.

In addition to saving time in routing, e-work avoids duplicating work. "When someone's answering a request, they search the system and find out if anybody else has answered a similar question in the recent past," Ebersole says. "That can save a tremendous amount of time, and it's something we couldn't do before."

The next step for the SBA is to roll out e-work to several hundred more users.