October 2001
E-Forms Follow Function
by Penelope Lunt
WHAT COMPANY WOULDN'T like to re-engineer its work processes to make them more intelligent, efficient and automated? Standing in the way are the "we've always done it this way" attitudes and the perceptions that the so-called "solutions" are often expensive, disruptive and hard to implement.
Although electronic forms technology may not leap to mind when you think of re-engineering, it probably should. "Electronic forms software represents the front end to workflow - it's the piece that the customer or user sees," points out Garth Landers, a research analyst in the collaborative and workflow knowledge technologies group at Gartner, Stamford, CT. "There was a trend of creating homegrown Internet forms applications to gather information - using HTML, CGI scripting and Visual Basic. But that trend has shifted in the past year to buying packaged electronic forms software with built-in workflow.
The reason for the shift, according to Landers, is that it's quite difficult to manage processes, and most companies are not in the business of being application developers.
"Workflow is a big challenge to enterprises - to plan and to map out, to re-examine how their current processes are done using paper and how they should be done electronically," he says. "From a user standpoint and from a planning standpoint, the form itself is the easy part."
Workflow allows the data typed into an electronic form to be validated, processed, approved and entered into ERP and other back-office systems. It's an engine that makes efficient business transactions possible over the Internet. For example, when a customer orders a replacement part using a Web-based form, the associated workflow could validate the customer's account information and send the part number to the inventory system to make sure the part is in stock. It could also send the request through the shipping system to find out when it can ship and display a confirmation notice to the customer stating when the part will be delivered.
With a simple HTML form, it is possible to send a confirmation to a customer that an order has been received, but the form alone can't validate information, run data through the back office or give the customer any firm details about the order.
Electronic forms software provides four elements that help streamline processes:
- Graphical workflow tools that let you map out the simplest and cleanest way to get a job done
- Standard formats such as XML that let the form data interact with other applications
- A user interface that mimics the forms people normally fill out to initiate a workflow
- Digital signatures that keep approvals and processes legal, even without handwritten signatures.
For three organizations-the University of California, the Government of Quebec and a Washington State real estate cooperative-electronic forms software combined with workflow have provided the means to streamline the way people work.
University Gets an ERP Upgrade
At the University of California at Fullerton, Chuck Kensicki was puzzling over a two-pronged problem. First, the University was upgrading from a homegrown enterprise resource planning (ERP) system to PeopleSoft ERP, but Kensicki had to figure out how to do it without having to retrain more than 2,000 University employees. Second, the University wanted to capitalize on employees' familiarity and comfort with existing paper-based processes while automating and streamlining to take full advantage of the new PeopleSoft system.
Kensicki, the University's director of enterprise computing, was well aware of the havoc that a new ERP system could wreak. "You hear large companies complain that they have to spend millions on training to implement SAP, Oracle or PeopleSoft," he says. "They have to retrain people on business processes that are geared toward screens that an ERP vendor gave them. What you really want to train people on is the company's own business processes, regardless of whatever new systems are installed in the back office."
Rather than forcing everyone to learn and use new PeopleSoft interfaces, Kensicki created a more familiar front end using Informed Aurora software from Shana, Edmonton, Alberta, and Panagon workflow software from FileNet, Costa Mesa, CA. The University was already using FileNet's Panagon software to create workflows for other purposes. The integration with Shana's Informed Aurora software let the new forms be routed, processed and fed into accounting and ERP systems automatically.
The University was able to create electronic forms that matched the look and feel of existing paper forms (such as job applications, time sheets and change-of-address forms) that employees were comfortable with and understood. Yet the information users submit is automatically sent into workflows that run over Microsoft Exchange and Outlook. Employees receive new tasks in their inboxes, complete their portion of the work and submit it. Once all the information for a particular job has been gathered, calculated and approved, the necessary pieces of data are moved directly into the back-office ERP systems.
While the electronic forms look familiar, Kensicki says his team found ways to make the University's workflows more intelligent, more understandable and more interactive-allowing one action to trigger others. For example, they automated the address change request process. A new electronic form was created and modeled on an existing paper form used by the payroll and benefits department. Kensicki's team determined that improvements could be added through the electronic workflow.
"When we looked at that form, we noticed that there was a box for 'number of deductions,'" Kensicki explains. "One of the main reasons people change their address is that they get married or divorced, which would affect their number of deductions. That made us realize that we should send them a W4 form so that they could recalculate it."
The team also recognized that if employees are changing their W4 and their deductions, they might also want to change their beneficiary. "We saw that adding additional steps is the key to helping employees through administrative tasks without giving them the runaround or having their forms get lost in the mail or linger on someone's desk," Kensicki says.
This project is still in the pilot phase, but Kensicki expects to see two major benefits from the new workflow and forms: "First, everything will be processed faster because it's no longer going through snail mail. Second, we'll be able to get better feedback from users, instead of people calling and asking whether someone got their form and where the form is."
Agency Adopts E-Flow
Serge Huot is project manager in the Direction Generale des Telecommunications (Telecommuni-cations Services), a department within the Government of Quebec. This internal agency provides services to other Quebec government ministries, and its success and importance is tied directly to the depth and breadth of its support. Understandably, Huot wanted to increase "business" with the other ministries, particularly small departments that might not have budgets for technology investments.
"We have to market ourselves to the other ministries, some of which are not currently our clients," Huot explains. His agency provides local and long distance telephone services, mobile communication services, data communication services and Internet services to almost all departments of the Quebec Government. The agency is now using electronic forms and workflow to add to its range of services.
The department's first e-forms and workflow client is the Direction de la Reprographie Gouvernementale, a government reprographics department that provides photocopy services to the rest of the Quebec Government. This group relied on a paper- and mail-intensive system for ordering volume photocopying, laser color photocopying, document assembly and other services. As a result, turnaround took days.
Using InTempo 5.0 electronic forms software from JetForm, Ottawa, Ontario, Huot set up an Internet-based workflow that lets the reprographic department's "customers" submit electronic forms with the documents to be processed attached. "The department gets an order requesting work over the government intranet, and it's received and fulfilled immediately," Huot says. "If there are corrections required-for example, if an image is no good and needs to be replaced-those corrections can also be processed more readily."
It took Huot about 20 days to design the form and develop the workflow. Users enter the reprographic department's Web site, identify themselves, select the right application, opens the forms, attach the files and submit the job to the workflow. The form is received, reviewed and forwarded based on the type of reproduction required. At the end of the process, the user is notified that the document has been processed and the order is archived. At any point in this workflow, the user can modify the attached files as necessary.
"Eventually, when the reprographics department is ready, we will add some steps to this workflow to integrate the information in the order directly with their billing system," Huot says.
By September, Huot expects to see 300 orders a month come through the reprographic department's new workflow. "We're seeing faster service, higher productivity, reduction of paper usage and lower costs for paper transport and storage."
Co-op Automates Home Sales
Log on to www.nwrealestate.com, and you can peruse photos and descriptions of some 30,000 homes for sale all over Washington State. The Web site is run by the Northwest Multiple Listing Service-a cooperative of 1,300 Washington real estate brokerage firms-which hosts Internet applications for its membership, operating much like an application service provider. To develop its latest service, called Xpress Forms, the company tied electronic forms to its central database to free up access to information.
"When an agent gets an offer on a home, she has to write the offer up and present it," says Lloyd Graves, member relations manager at Northwest Multiple Listing Service. "Using Xpress Forms, she can do it in a very automated way."
Purchase and sale agreements often have as many as 20 addenda, according to Graves. Each addendum has to include the buyer's and seller's names and addresses as well as the property information. Where before agents had to handwrite or type that information in on paper forms, they now simply enter the listing number and a secure ID number on a Web-based form. The rest of the information is downloaded automatically from the database. This saves the agents time, and it speeds real estate transactions and customer service.
When the listings service reviewed the electronic forms products available, Graves says the co-op wanted to be sure it could host an extensive library of forms requiring frequent updates. At the same time, it needed to ensure that the forms could not be altered, and it wanted to minimize the need for repetitive manual data entry. The firm settled on the Internet Commerce System (ICS) from PureEdge, Victoria, B.C., for its combination of technologies solving each of these demands.
Using ICS, Northwest Multiple Listing Service is now hosting Web-accessible electronic versions of the many forms required to transact the sale of a property, and they can be revised as needed. "Due to changes in local business practices, legislative changes or local ordinance changes, many of these forms change or there are new ones created," says Graves. "We need to be able to respond quickly to provide the updated forms."
Web accessibility has brought convenience to the co-ops' highly mobile membership. "Real estate agents rarely do their primary sales work in an office," Graves says. "Usually they are in a car, someone's home, a restaurant, etc., when they need to fill out a purchase or sales agreement. With all of the forms accessible on the Internet, the agent can get a form 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. They can also save a form or forms to their laptop computer and keep them with them when they can't access the Internet."
Many of the forms used in the transaction of real estate are legally binding documents, so the co-op had to ensure that legal text was inviolate - that there was no ability to change the text. While administrators can revise and publish new versions of forms, the ICS system ensures that unauthorized users can't alter approved text without visible indications, such as strike-throughs, that the original was altered. The text is password-protected and the source code is hidden.
Any electronic form offers advantages in speed, labor savings and accuracy over handwritten forms, but Northwest Multiple Listing Service took this a step further with the Internet Commerce System's transaction profiling capability. The system allowed the co-op to compile lists of answers that could be used to auto-fill related fields on all forms, saving time and avoiding mistakes and inappropriate answers. When corrections or additions are needed, the changes are made to the transaction profile, and all forms can be automatically revised.
While workflow isn't a concern for the Northwest Multiple Listing Service, it does enter the process for real estate companies. "The online forms can be emailed and used with digital signatures," Graves says, adding that this process reduces the time needed to complete a sale. "[Real estate] companies can also extract data from forms to use in any back office accounting programs they use for commission payments and/or to track the progress of transactions."
Needs vs. Opportunities
It's easy to create simple Web-based forms without an electronic forms package, but the more complexity you encounter, the more these complete systems may make sense. In many cases, complicated transactions and business processes demand features such as versioning, workflow and electronic signatures.
"The need for a forms package depends on what you're doing," says Steve Weissman, president of Kinetic Information, a Waltham, MA, research firm. "If all you're doing is capturing names, addresses and phone numbers, you can do that with Notepad. The more you look at the entire process, the more you'll be inclined to expand the scope of what you're doing and add features like workflow."
Penelope Lunt is a freelance writer based in New Rochelle, NY. She can be reached at penny.lunt@verizon.net.
Case Study: University of California at Fullerton.
Challenge: To re-engineer administrative functions and implement PeopleSoft ERP with minimal retraining.
Electronic forms product: Informed Aurora.
Vendor: Shana, Edmonton, Alberta, 780-433-3690, www.shana.com.
Pricing: Deployments are priced on the basis of site license, concurrent user and server-based models.
Comment: Informed Aurora has its own forms routing feature, but this version is specifically designed to work with the Panagon eProcess Services workflow from FileNet, Costa Mesa, CA.
Case Study: The Government of Quebec
Challenge: To help multiple governmental agencies and departments bring their business processes online.
Electronic form product: InTempo 5.0.
Vendor: JetForm, Ottawa, Ontario, 613-751-4800, www.jetform.com.
Pricing: Starts at $25,000 for 50 users.
Comment: Includes workflow and enterprise app integration tools.
Case Study: Northwest Multiple Listing Service
Challenge: To automate the time-consuming home-buying process for member real estate brokerage firms
Electronic forms product: Internet Commerce System.
Vendor: PureEdge, Victoria, BC, 250-708-8000, www.pureedge.com
Price: Starts at $10,000.
Comment: A new version set for release in September will provide five levels of security, including digital signatures and other authentication measures.
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