Workflow spins to the Web

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Back in the days when dot-com wasn’t a dirty word, organisations were being urged to embrace the Internet and build it into their business processes.

Although much of this rush to the Web happened with little heed for what benefits could be derived from it, the fact is that the Internet has, by degrees, become central to many applications and programs now in everyday use.

Workflow systems are not applications that the Web can take credit for directly, but it has helped the technology behind them to make great strides. Workflow is essentially any business process that requires authorisation or approval of some kind. This could involve one step or it could involve twenty and it is common to document and content management systems.

Here is where the Internet comes in: Web-based workflow systems mean that the browser offers an interface to the documents or content, instead of a proprietary application that needs to be installed on every user’s desktop.

The problem with accessing hard-copy documents, for example—having to be in the same place to look at them—is eliminated by the use of Web browsers. Not only can a company’s staff view or approve documents remotely, people outside the organisation such as suppliers or customers may be able to do so. Many document management or content management systems are now being developed with this function in mind.

Making information available on a public Website can have spinoff benefits, as it can be offered to users as a value-added service. First and foremost though, a company will see what benefits it can derive internally by using workflow systems to improve its administrative and operational processes. These typically include faster processing times for documents, as workflow is most likely to involve electronic documents or content.

‘Document handling and management is particularly burdensome to some companies and the efficiencies that can result from the use of an information system can be significant,’ says David Goodstein, e-business consultant with the developer Magico Software.

The nature of any particular information system will be determined by the kinds of documents a company deals with. Any business with a large reliance on paper is probably a good candidate for document management and the workflow that goes with it.

‘All workflow systems we’re deploying at the moment are Web-based,’ reports Susan Spence, of Softco, a document-management specialist firm. ‘The concept hasn’t changed, but the technology has come on in leaps and bounds. Workflow wasn’t as flexible as it is today because of the Web.’

SoftCo focuses on a critical part of any business: Using document management and workflow to manage the accounts payable and receivable processes. This also tends to be a paper-intensive process.

Boiling point

This essentially boils down to collecting money. According to Spence, many of the manual steps that businesses currently need to do this can be automated. ‘Look at the steps in the payables process: You capture a document, link it with the accounts payable process, producing copies of invoices for suppliers: You can put a cost against every one of those steps,’ she says. ‘You can really cost-justify a system in a relatively short space of time.’

This is an important selling point at a time when technology investment is being cut back due to the unfavourable economic climate. Martin Dunne, managing director of Pembroke Technologies, adds that many companies have now settled on an accounts system that will last, having endured a lot of upgrades over the past couple of years with Y2K and the euro. As a result, now that their accounts system is stable, it is easier to see the advantages of linking that to a document management system. And, he argues, companies are more likely to approve the IT budget to invest in such a system.

Not only do companies save costs on doing business, but the prices of workflow and document management systems (DMS) themselves have also fallen, thanks in large part to standards-based Web technology. ‘Years ago, when documents used to be transmitted via EDI, there was a high cost of entry,’ adds Susan Spence. ‘Now XML (extensible markup language) means the entry point is extremely low. You can send an invoice from one person to another using XML. The reason why workflow is gaining ground is because the cost has come down and ease of use has improved. With the Web, it’s possible to be part of a workflow from a remote location.’

Before management, there must be documents and when scanning paper forms is part of a workflow process, then the engine that ‘reads’ the original form becomes an important part of the system.

Optical character recognition or OCR is a wellworn term that is familiar to anyone who has used a scanner. A trend to watch for in the future is ICR or intelligent character recognition, which promises to improve further the ability of scanners to read and interpret the information contained on paper forms and documents.

Martin Dunne likens ICR to voice recognition software—it can ‘guess’ the correct word on a form or document. If the information is typed, the process can be automated, but if the form contains handwritten information, then the workflow will involve some human intervention, even if it is just checking the form visually to make sure that the system has ‘read’ the information correctly. For organisations that regularly deal with large volumes of documents, this level of automation is still a significant improvement on manual processes.

The kinds of documents a company receives will also determine how efficient their document management system is likely to be. If it is a standard form, where the information is consistently in the same place, then it is possible to ‘tune’ the DMS to recognise what it is looking for.

Before any of this is put in place, it needs a lot of up-front consultancy because ICR systems currently rely on the information being in the same place every time, in order to grab the correct data. ‘The way you design the form is critical to the way the system works,’ says Dunne, who adds that it is currently being used or considered for repetitive forms which are distributed in large quantities, such as income tax returns or census returns.

ICR learning curve

Susan Spence points out that ICR isn’t applicable yet to companies which might have 10 or 20 suppliers, whose invoices are likely to vary from one another. ‘You can’t oblige them all to change their forms,’ Spence acknowledges. Where ICR will really come into its own, she says, is where it can identify an item such as an account number from a form, where every form is different. Effectively the software running on the ICR engine has to ‘learn’ as it goes. ‘That area is very much emerging,’ she says.

On the other side of the coin, a workflow system becomes a Web content management system when the Website content is updated as the workflow progresses. This enables clients to review and contribute to the workflow.

‘No company can fully realise the benefits of a Web channel unless they have full control over their Website content and the Website integrates with business processes,’ argues David Goodstein of Magico Software.

Some hold the view that content management is a richer and more broad-ranging term than document management, rather than a niche of the same area. ‘Documents are paper or their scanned equivalents; content management covers that, but it also includes database fields, for example an online order form,’ says Piero Tintori, managing director of TerminalFour, developer of the SiteManager content management system.

He makes the distinction that document management is primarily used for archiving information that is not necessarily for use on a daily basis, whereas content management makes information accessible in real time.

Content management systems need not be exclusively geared for publishing information, he argues: They can be used just to route documents or data around an organisation—which is another way of saying ‘workflow’.

He uses the example of a self-service application—this could be a form for holiday leave on an intranet page. Once an employee completes the form in a browser window, it is then routed to their immediate manager, from there to the company’s human resources department and subsequently to the payroll department. ‘You’ve now got a completely paperless trail, but it is traceable and approved,’ says Tintori.

Such applications are of use in companies that are ISO certified, for example, or industry sectors governed by strong regulation and procedures, such as the pharmaceutical business.

According to Tintori, a CMS should include a reporting facility to make sure that the workflow doesn’t become stalled. ‘You need to be able to track what’s getting done and not done,’ he says. Similar to this is the audit trail: Where documents have to be seen and signed off by certain people within an organisation, this feature 

Another important feature is version control. Unlike scanned documents, where the paper original remains on file, ‘soft’ content may be modified by a number of people during the workflow process. Version control tracks how a document looked before and after any alterations. It also prevents two people from editing the same document at the same time. In a recent report, Forrester Research earmarked version control as a ‘top requirement’ of a CMS.

The rules

Tintori splits the workflow function into three areas. The first is directional functions, which determine who sees what information, based on pre-set business rules. The next is security; this relates to the approval of content and ensures that only certain people are permitted to make changes. The final part of the workflow concerns how to mine or retrieve that information once it has been through all of these processes.

The consulting and integration division of HP’s services arm implements workflow systems based mainly—but not exclusively—around the Microsoft toolset, typically using Exchange, SQL Server, Sharepoint Portal Server and Active Directory. According to Frank Henry, a Solution Architect with HP Ireland, this kind of application is suited to the needs of many companies in this country. He likens high-end document management products to ERP systems; large, complex to roll out and typically found at head office of a multinational rather than its Irish subsidiary or even an indigenous firm. ‘You can more readily meet customer needs with Microsoft because of the scale of the project and because of their budget,’ he suggests. ‘We see a lot of demand for solutions you can meet with the Microsoft product set.’

Although HP has deals with software suppliers such as Autonomy and Plumtree, Autonomy for example requires millions of documents to be stored—a facility which few Irish companies would need.

As with many areas of software development, the debate between buying off-the-shelf and custom-built systems for workflow will continue. It is also likely to be driven largely by the needs of the indivdual customer and the rules that apply to their business.

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