The Elements of Empowerment

The need for the empowerment of business users becomes ever more apparent in modern workplaces and numerous studies prove that it is indispensable when it comes to the effective and efficient support of high-value processes and decision making. Yet the very concept of empowerment itself is repeatedly questioned because there are unclear notions of its meaning and its scope.

However, a good understanding of empowerment and how to use IT to enable knowledge work and innovation is crucial for an organization’s competitive edge. Only businesses that manage to use technology as an innovation enabler are shooting past those that control IT and/or processes by using governance, centers of excellence and best practices. Therefore empowerment for business users centers around the following:

• Authority
• Goals
• Means

What does it mean in detail? Authority for the business user must be within precise boundaries of a business architecture, business rules and security requirements. But there must be a degree of freedom for the social business process network of a business to produce outcomes within clearly defined and transparent goals. Achieving these goals and providing the necessary transparency again requires adequate means in terms of management guidance and technology to turn knowledge into perceived value for the customer. As this includes monitoring and auditing it reaches beyond basic collaboration, email or social enterprise tools. This kind of empowerment that produces results for the business rather needs tools to provide for continuous process improvement by easily adapting to changing business needs instead of flowcharted process models with substantial governance overhead.

Case Study: Banking Group Optimizes Secure Payment Processing

The introduction of new financial instruments, standards, procedures, and infrastructure in the European financial markets has made the  requirements for paper-based and electronic payments immensely demanding: timely and highly efficient processing, easy clarification of ambiguities and a concurrent overview both in the day-to-day business and in an archive under auditing security.

One of the major European banking groups implemented a Papyrus Capture end-to-end solution to automate its complete processes of recording payment documents from scanning in more than 100 branches all over the country with Fujitsu Desktop scanners including endorsement to archiving in the Papyrus WebArchive. Stages in-between consist of the secure transfer via the heterogeneous network to the central processing office, the classification according to 5 basic transfer types with more than 80 related forms and text recognition of documents not suited for OCR/ICR.

Before being posted to the bank’s accounting system there are strict validations like checking the correctness of the international bank account number (IBAN) and comparing it to available databases like customer accounts and a two-tier manual process of data recording and checking to ensure absolutely correct records.

Special emphasis was placed on ergonomic and high-performance data recording: Papyrus EYE enables the definition of identical interfaces for Desktop and Portal. In the case of ambiguities they allow to add stickers (like you had them on paper) at the exact position with a written note for further clarification from the referring branch.

By introducing this innovative application the bank can now quickly and automatically process tens of thousands of payment documents per day and enjoys the following benefits:

• Concurrent overview of all process stages
• Optimized balance of resources by distributed scanning and centralized data recording and processing
• Integrated security through encryption, role-based access rights and secure archiving

The bank has also made an efficient and future-proof investment as the solution from ISIS Papyrus is easily scalable to growing volumes.

Case Study: Internet Banking with Papyrus

This solution from ISIS Papyrus was implemented in one of the biggest banks with branch offices in Germany, employing more than 4,000 people. The main business focus is investment and internet banking. Its activities also include property financing and services for institutions and businesses as well as securities trading.

The bank implemented a banking portal as a virtual customer service branch office. Outstanding customer service by providing 24/7 access for personalized statements and reports were set as requirements. Depending on the client profile, the same document must also be printable in high quality, automatically be enveloped and mailed. Leveraging existing business data directly from the business application on the mainframe for electronic document presentment and optional printing was a prerequisite.

Those were the full requirements:

• Internet Banking document service based on existing z/OS mainframe application programs delivering the business data for the statements and reports
• Viewing of the statements and reports in the browser in PDF format
• Optional printing of same documents on different printers
• E-mail notification with Hyperlink in documents on new available statements in the e-Postbox
• Around the clock access: 24/7/365

The Papyrus Platform delivered the following benefits:

• Legacy business data is fully supported
• Single time document design and formatting for 100%identical results on Web and paper
• Fast document development using 100% WYSIWYG PapyrusDesigner
• Business-user departments are empowered to edit text and marketing messages using Papyrus EYE user-friendly Flash GUI
• DocEXEC high speed batch and ad-hoc formatting on 11 platforms
• Repository for central management and administration of all document resources, building blocks, user authorization and document processes
• WebArchive – AFP to PDF generation on the fly
• PrintPool for central output management adding OMR and Barcodes
• Using central print and mail facilities for statements not viewed through the internet
• E-mail Server for e-mail notification and URL

Although the solution shows a fairly complex application there were less than 6 weeks of total on-site support needed from ISIS Papyrus. This included the document development effort and the setup of the central Repository and Archive. The total project phase
was five months.

Taking Customer Service to the Next Level

The stories of poor customer services and the feeling of annoyance when needing to contact companies are seemingly endless. Therefore there is ample room for companies to offer superior services to compete for consumers’ tighter budgets and create loyal customers.

One way to step up customer service is the Web Archive for iPhone/iPod Touch that brings many of the Papyrus WebArchive features to the popular phone. Companies can give their customers access to their documents such as phone bills by just a touch on their mobile phone. No more unnecessary hold time and frustrated customers when a service representative isn’t in reach of a PC or has their notebook down. No more irritated clients being passed around and having to repeat themselves. A customer service representative of a large insurance company put it that way, “You know, these days information is not just kept inside the business like it used to, it really travels beyond the company to customers and partners and without Papyrus we couldn’t keep all this information unified and up to date. This amazing app now lets our agents have customer-related documents readily available when receiving a call and respond to customer inquiries as well as making notes where appropriate. We in turn can trace these notes and act as necessary. It’s just another step to increase our service availability.”

The benefits of Papyrus WebArchive in consolidated customer services have been used by many customer-oriented organizations to improve their services. Banks use it to distribute statements and other customer documents and bank statements to branch office servers to be collected by their customers. Insurance companies use WebArchive servers for access by internal and agent staff. Documents produced centrally are stored just as documents produced by the agent. Any customer query can be answered immediately. Customer documents can be printed, faxed or e-mailed as copy from the original document file. Telcos and utilities make billing information available for their staff and also for their customers over the Internet with hyperlinks enabling company staff to interact with host transactions via the document directly. And manufacturers and engineering firms provide any kind of document from technical drawings, parts catalogs and billing information for internal and worldwide access.

Tech Update and New Blog for ACM

As Adaptive Case Management has only fairly recently been discussed by a wider public there are still many questions, uncertainties, controversies and doubts about its meaning and its purpose. Yet ACM shows its importance as ACM is claimed by many while there is actually no basis for it. This makes the discussion even more confusing.

A recently released tech update by ISIS Papyrus and a new blog now shed light on the various aspects of ACM and provide insightful and authoritative information about the topic, explaining how it serves to empower knowledge workers in order to fulfill strategic business goals.

Other aspects illustrate the practical implementation of ACM with the consolidated approach of the Papyrus Adaptive Process Platform. It provides a comprehensive, flexible and scalable solution for the consolidated management of inbound and outbound communications and enables seamless functional cooperation of otherwise distinct products such as ECM, BPM or CRM. It allows organizations to define, measure and manage process, content and data in complex service environments with a single shared customer view and customized GUIs for ultimate transparency.

Adaptive Case Management for User Empowerment

Many organizations these days strive to cut the costs of their IT operations while maintaining their customer service quality. This may seem hard to achieve at first sight but the solution is to shift the control of business-relevant processes from IT to business users without giving up the integrity of the core systems.

This is a key idea behind the concept of the Adaptive Case Management concept from ISIS Papyrus which empowers expert business users. In fact they are enabled to adapt processes as necessary with complete independence of the underlying application logic. This allows them to fulfill strategic business goals without relying on a rigid and complex custom-coded IT infrastructure.

The approach behind this is not to restrict business users in their execution but to guide them collaboratively by process definitions, monitored by business rules and measured by goal fulfillment without the need for integrating different product fragments of one or multiple software vendors. Papyrus provides seamless consolidation of freely-definable processes, rules, GUI, forms, and inbound and outbound content objects.

Speeding Claims to Closure with Papyrus

The primary benefits of the Papyrus Platform are gained from empowering business users to serve customers as individuals while conforming to business rules and process requirements. In a recently implemented insurance claims handling application one business user described the improvements this way:

“To handle an insurance claim is not a simple straight line from start to finish. It involves various documents, communication with the customer, the claim assessment, contract data, and many others. We have all of those data and incoming documents in business applications since a number of years but I had to access multiple systems, write letters and emails and keep track of deadlines in my calender. Collaborating with colleagues and partners was not supported in any way.”

“In recent years there have been discussions to create predefined business process templates but those efforts failed because of the complexity of claims handling.”

“With the claims handling case management created in Papyrus I have the best of all worlds. I have access to all the contract data and documents in existing systems, as well as my emails, outgoing documents, claims handling rules, calender dates, collaboration with others are all in one place. There is no rigid process I have to follow, but the system guides me to complete certain activities and checks for completeness of all data and documents. I can collaborate with anyone including dynamic assignment of work items. Papyrus keeps a complete track of all communication threads, emails, notes and memorandums. All outgoing documents are stored as templates that automatically pull in the necessary business data from our insurance system. That is completely transparent to me and I do not have to know how this works.”

“If I have the need for more functionality, I can create new text elements for my documents at any time and have them verified by the responsible department. My letters are countersigned by the department head before they are sent to the customer by either letter, fax or email. Before I had to type the letter in MS-Word and print it myself. Other documents were done in two different insurance applications. Now they are all in one place!”

“The administrator of our department can add new case handling rules, create new data entry forms, new work activities and assign them to our library when we need them. My workplace look and feel I can define myself without needing anyone from the IT department.”

One of the most effective features is the global INBOX that I use to manage all my work. All reminders from the insurance system, my emails, requests from colleagues, calender events, and the outstanding activities of the claims handling are in one place only.

“The case management application we created with Papyrus saves me a substantial amount if time and I can service our customers substantially faster. Most of all there is much less danger of necessary activities being missed or delayed.”

WebArchive Goes Mobile With iPhone

The powerful WebArchive solution from ISIS Papyrus for short and long-term archiving and easy retrieval has now joined top perfomance for high-quality, on-the-go customer communications and response with the mobility and convenience of the iPhone.

This recent development is part of the new strategy of ISIS Papyrus to support mobile applications and will be followed up by support for Windows Mobile 7 and Symbian.

We have investigated the benefits of the Papyrus iPhone app and asked people who already employ it in their everyday business. A senior product manager at a major telecommunications provider put it like this:

“We want to offer this app both to our customer service reps as well as to a very well-defined target group of customers as a value proposition. Our staff will now have a huge amount of documents available to service their clients instantly without the need of opening and connecting their notebook first or even the need of having their notebooks with them. On the customer’s request and with proper authorization they can edit or annotate those documents and the changes will be reflected throughout the entire organization. Customers are given access to their documents without any intermediary and at any given time. But this is only part of the story. However well designed a customer offering may be, it will fail when poorly executed. We use the advantages of the Papyrus Platform in its entirety to provide a unified experience for the customer. First we enable and promote the collaboration of cross-functional teams from sales and marketing to logistics and supplies in our own organization and with partners and we highly value any communication with our customers as a precious resource. Because it is not so much data mining and other statistic guesswork that tells you what your customers want, they will rather tell you personally if you are ready to listen to them. And we certainly are!”

On asking if they were just jumping the bandwagon to capitalize on the popularity of the iPhone he adds the following:

“This all is not just a new random offering but part of an integrated strategy of providing a service platform for highly targeted individuals. Papyrus allows everyone in the organization to understand, subscribe to and fulfill the importance of the customer experience and our commitment to make it valuable and pleasant. This is not a one-off effort but a an ongoing process which we couldn’t manage without an integrated communications platform.”

At this point he is assisted by the VP of Costumer Services who had joined our conversation earlier and points out:

“By integrating the whole communication with the customer at each touchpoint we can focus on the entire customer experience. Each interaction of the customer with different departments of our company is equally important and Papyrus gives us the complete transparency to track these interactions by providing all of our staff with access to all customer-related communications together with real-time data in a single view.”

To find out how the WebArchive iPhone app can help you in fulfilling your organization’s strategic goals read a detailed description and a list of features here or get it at the Apple Appstore.

Business Architecture: Consolidation vs. Integration

The enterprise IT market is often characterized by fragmented products for specific applications. Although their hard-coded functionality may seem sufficient for the intended purpose it is time and again overlooked how much effort it takes to integrate them via XML and SOA.

The Business Architecture concept of ISIS Papyrus therefore provides businesses with a single consolidated information system that offers collaboration, process coordination and role coaching on top of the background data processing. This single information platform enables a business to model its key information assets, to support its process workgroups and to create and retain the knowledge about how the business actually performs its processes. All this knowledge and experience is shared between workgroups according to authority. Management can monitor quality criteria and audit each single process if needed. Because it is a single life-cycle platform, software borders do not exist and process optimization is a continuous exercise that does not require complex projects.

Enterprise architects who hope to  create an infrastructure of replaceable components by segmenting and layering various products have to consider poor compliance to standards and continuously changing products. These are major stumbling blocks for an enterprise architecture, whereas ISIS Papyrus integrates seamlessly with legacy applications to provide instant benefits with its rich functionality and platform and output channel independence. On the long term it provides an application infrastructure that allows for a gradual enterprise strategy towards consolidation with no additional integration efforts.

Avoiding Constraints Of Conventional BPM

When analysts come to the conclusion that end-user organizations want to be able to change their processes considerably faster than they actually can and add “They want to move to environments in which there’s a lot more self sufficiency on the part of the end user to configure the process,” this clearly reflects the constraints of currently used rigid process models.

To avoid such limitations ISIS Papyrus focuses on the business needs to respond quickly to dynamically changing customer requirements. The built-in process engine of the Papyrus Platform does not use simplistic procedural flowchart graphs to define the process but instead the Papyrus BPM is state and event driven to avoid problems associated with parallel activities, human interaction management and the rigid sequence of a procedure. This state and event driven process does not require complex decision blocks or listen-for-event-loops. All changes of the process are defined in the Desktop and stored in the central WebRepository.

Papyrus process management is flexible, understands the needs of users and supports knowledge-intensive business processes in combination with business communication. Users define the user interaction with the Activity Recorder and Natural Language Rule Editor and train the process sequence with the User-trained Agent. Collaboration, check-in/check-out, versioning, project management are generic platform functions. Other major benefits include:

• Less process tuning and correction because an unforeseeable event sequence does not invalidate the process
• Changing the state engine and event definition of one item updates automatically all processes using this item
• Changes of the process do not require Java coding
• No programming of dialogs required