These materials are © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Any

These materials are © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Any dissemination, distribution, or unauthorized use is strictly prohibited.

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Business Process Apps for Finance and Purchasing

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by Lawrence Miller, CISSP

K2® Special Edition


Business Process Apps for Finance and Purchasing For Dummies®, K2® Special EditionPublished by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 111 River St. Hoboken, NJ 07030‐5774 www.wiley.com

Copyright © 2016 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey

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Table of ContentsIntroduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1

About This Book ........................................................................ 2Foolish Assumptions ................................................................. 2Icons Used in This Book ............................................................ 3Beyond the Book ........................................................................ 3Where to Go from Here ............................................................. 3

Chapter 1: Recognizing How Workflows and Forms Drive Efficiency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5

Understanding the Cost of Business Process Inefficiency .............................................................................. 5

Automating Workflows to Increase Efficiency ....................... 7

Chapter 2: Finance Process Improvements That Save Time and Money . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .13

Building Better Budgets .......................................................... 14Managing Expense Claims....................................................... 14Facilitating Audits .................................................................... 15Ensuring Compliance ............................................................... 16Processing Invoices ................................................................. 18

Chapter 3: Purchasing Process Improvements for Every Company . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .21

Managing RFQs ......................................................................... 21Authorizing Expenditures ....................................................... 22Managing Contracts ................................................................. 24Managing Vendor Performance and Service‐Level

Agreements ........................................................................... 25

Chapter 4: DIY Process‐Based Workflows . . . . . . . . . . .27Is Your IT Development Backlog Holding You Back? .......... 27Overhauling Your Workflows for the Mobile Age ................ 28

Demand meets modernization ..................................... 29Empowering mobile users ............................................ 31Automating workflows to increase efficiency ............ 31

Building Business Apps that Transform Finance and Purchasing ..................................................................... 32

Future Proofing with Scalable Apps You Can Build Yourself ....................................................................... 34

iv

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Chapter 5: Building the Business Case for Process Transformation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .37

Focusing on Revenue Growth Opportunities ....................... 37Improving Planning with Better Financial Insights .............. 38Aligning Processes Throughout Your Organization for

Operational Excellence........................................................ 39

Chapter 6: Ten Keys for Transforming Business Processes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .41

Empower Users with Easy, Do‐It‐Yourself Tools.................. 41Automate Manual, Error‐Prone Processes ........................... 41Go Beyond Process Automation with Process

Improvement ........................................................................ 42Integrate Seamlessly with Existing Systems and

Reusable Components ......................................................... 42Deliver Information at the Point of Need .............................. 43Enable Advanced Analytics and Reporting .......................... 43Drive Change with Flexibility and Agility .............................. 43Balance Power and Simplicity ................................................ 43Provide Secure Mobile Access to Forms,

Workflows, and Data ............................................................ 44Measure and Report Your Results ......................................... 44

Business Process Apps for Finance and Purchasing For Dummies, K2 Special Edition

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Introduction

T o be successful today, businesses must adapt faster to increasing competition and do even more with less — less

time and fewer resources. Core finance and purchasing pro-cesses are a key area in which business processes can often be easily automated to facilitate greater operational efficien-cies and better decision making throughout the organization.

In a world in which speed matters, businesses need agility and flexibility to quickly modify their processes and business practices in order to stay competitive. Traditionally, large companies have hampered process agility by locking them-selves into monolithic systems, processes, and workflows.

Different business process management (BPM) suites have unique strengths and weaknesses. However, a common weak-ness among many BPM solutions is the lack of agility. Highly skilled developers and months (or even years) of coding are typically required to build and customize business applica-tions. By the time an application is delivered, the business process may have changed, requiring further tweaking of the application and many more months of development time. As a result, businesses are stuck with outdated and inflexible appli-cations and processes.

The rapid pace of modernization and evolving customer expectations are increasingly driving organizations toward business process transformation in the quest to achieve pro-cess excellence. Low‐code business process apps solutions enable companies to rapidly build and deploy applications that are customized to meet their unique business needs. Unlike traditional BPM options, the opportunities to transform quickly and immediately realize the benefits are greater with low‐code business process apps solutions.

Choosing the right solution for business process transforma-tion will provide easy access to information and quantifiable results, and choosing a solution that is agile, scalable, and powerful will give your business the tools it needs to stay ahead in a highly competitive market.


About This BookThis book explains how automated business workflows and forms help drive efficiency (Chapter 1); explores different finance and purchasing use cases (Chapters 2 and 3, respec-tively); describes how to build automated, process‐based workflows without being a developer (Chapter 4); examines how businesses can use a single workflow solution across the entire organization (Chapter 5); and provides key criteria to help you evaluate business process apps solutions for your organization (Chapter 6).

Foolish AssumptionsIt has been said that most assumptions have outlived their uselessness, but I assume a few things nonetheless.

Mainly, I assume that you’re a finance or purchasing manager, working for a small or medium business, or perhaps a large enterprise. Therefore, I wrote this book primarily for nontech-nical readers. But please don’t be discouraged from reading this book if you happen to be technical — you can still gain a better understanding of the challenges and opportunities that other departments in your company are focused on, and how to improve support for your peers in other departments throughout the company.

I also assume that you’re looking for a solution to help you automate critical business forms and workflow processes in your organization to radically improve your core finance and purchasing processes, and you don’t particularly want to become a software developer. You need a solution that’s as easy as drag‐and‐drop so that you can get up and running as quickly as possible, without adding to the workload of your heavily backlogged IT application development teams.

If these assumptions describe you, this book is for you!

Business Process Apps for Finance and Purchasing For Dummies, K2 Special Edition 2



Icons Used in This BookThroughout this book, I occasionally use special icons to call attention to important information. Here’s what to expect:

This icon points out information that you should commit to your nonvolatile memory, your gray matter, or your noggin — along with anniversaries and birthdays.

You won’t find a map of the human genome here, but if you seek to attain the seventh level of NERD‐vana, perk up! This icon explains the jargon beneath the jargon.

Thank you for reading; hope you enjoy the book; please take care of your writers! Seriously, this icon points out helpful suggestions and useful nuggets of information.

This icon points out the stuff your mother warned you about. Okay, probably not. But you should take heed nonetheless — you might just save yourself some time and frustration.

Beyond the BookI can cover only so much in 48 short pages, so if you find your-self at the end of this book thinking “Gosh, this was an amaz-ing book, where can I learn more?” just go to www.k2.com.

Where to Go from HereWith my apologies to Lewis Carroll, Alice, and the Cheshire cat:

“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”

“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat — er, the Dummies Man.

“I don’t much care where . . . ” said Alice.

“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go!”

Introduction 3


http://www.k2.com


That’s certainly true of Business Process Apps for Finance and Purchasing For Dummies, which, like Alice in Wonderland, is also destined to become a timeless classic.

If you don’t know where you’re going, any chapter will get you there — but Chapter 1 might be a good place to start. However, if you see a particular topic that piques your inter-est, feel free to jump ahead to that chapter. Each chapter is individually wrapped (but not packaged for individual sale) and written to stand on its own, so feel free to start reading anywhere and skip around to your heart’s content. Read this book in any order that suits you (though I don’t recommend upside down or backwards).

I promise you won’t get lost falling down the rabbit hole!



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Recognizing How Workflows and Forms Drive

EfficiencyIn This Chapter

▶▶ Eliminating bottlenecks and costly errors in core business processes

▶▶ Moving beyond manual, paper‐based workflows and forms

I n this chapter, you explore the benefits of automating your process‐based workflows and forms. You also learn how a

business process apps solution can help you quickly achieve business agility through process automation and excellence.

Understanding the Cost of Business Process Inefficiency

Process bottlenecks and costly errors often result from ineffi-cient and manual workflows and paper‐based forms. Real‐time access to the right information at the point of need is criti-cal for maintaining accuracy and efficiency in transactional processes. For example, without up‐to‐date account informa-tion, a customer’s purchase order may be delayed while your accounts receivable team verifies that the customer’s account is current and has sufficient credit available for the purchase.

Manual, paper‐based processes or complex and inflexible business applications inevitably slow many finance and purchasing processes to an unacceptable pace in today’s

Chapter 1


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modern, connected, and highly competitive business environ-ment. For example, a paper‐based invoice approval process might require a line‐of‐business (LOB) manager to be in the office to review an invoice and match it to a budget authoriza-tion (conveniently saved as a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet on the manager’s network home drive) and a paper‐based pur-chase order. Next, the manager needs to code the invoice to a general ledger account. (The most commonly used accounts for the department are, of course, listed on a sticky note taped to the manager’s monitor.)

Frustrated by inefficient workflows and processes, employees are increasingly using their own devices and downloading their own applications (“apps”) to get work done. The modern worker is tech savvy and finds ways to work around infra-structure limitations and rigid, outdated processes.

According to Gartner (www.gartner.com), a digital work-place leverages the technical literacy of cross‐ generation employees — Millennials, Gen Xers, and even Baby Boomers — to

✓ Enable new and more effective ways of working

✓ Improve employee engagement and agility

✓ Exploit consumer‐oriented styles and technologies

International Data Group (IDG, www.idg.com) reports that businesses expect the consumerization of IT in the enterprise to improve user satisfaction and productivity, process efficiency, collaboration, and business agility. In fact, data shows that businesses are eager to keep employees productive wherever they go and whenever they work:

✓ According to Manufacturing Business Technology, 55 percent of manufacturing professionals expect to increase their use of mobile technologies (www.mbtmag.com/news/2016/02/survey‐majority‐manu facturers‐plan‐bolster‐mobile‐app‐use).

✓ According to Workflow Magazine, 74 percent of busi-nesses that deploy mobile devices are motivated by a need to accelerate communication, and 63 percent of businesses deploy mobile devices to let employees work away from their desks (“IT Managers’ Views on Mobile Tech and Workflow,” September 2014).

http://www.gartner.com

http://www.idg.com

http://www.mbtmag.com/news/2016/02/survey-majority-manufacturers-plan-bolster-mobile-app-use



Chapter 1: Recognizing How Workflows and Forms Drive Efficiency 7

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Modern business apps must do more than simply enable employees to read and reply to emails from their mobile devices. They must be able to seamlessly complete routine tasks whether in the office or in the field — for everything from processing invoices and issuing purchase orders to complex process management and sophisticated financial analysis.

Automating Workflows to Increase Efficiency

Almost every part of a successful business relies on having the right information available to the right person at the right time. Nevertheless, information flow is often hindered by

✓ Manual, paper‐based business processes that are out-dated, inefficient, and inflexible

✓ Disparate LOB systems — such as customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) — which store critical information in isolated silos and are difficult to customize, integrate, and use (and you can forget about mobile access!)

A business can only go as far and as fast as the information that powers it.

Consider the example of the customer purchase order delayed by manual verification processes, described earlier in this chapter. A more efficient, automated process might instead pull information from your ERP system in real time as a sales order is being created. This process can verify that an account is current and has sufficient credit available, allow-ing the sales order to be immediately created or the request automatically routed to the appropriate parties to resolve any discrepancies.

Manual, paper‐based processes and monolithic business systems simply can’t keep pace with the modern digital work-place and economy. Already, employees and consumers are looking elsewhere. For example, IDG reports that 79 percent of employees use cloud‐based file sharing and collaboration tools, such as Box, Dropbox, and OneDrive, for work‐related


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purposes. Similarly, Internet Retailer (www.internet retailer.com) estimated that total e‐commerce sales in 2015 exceeded $350 billion — with mobile commerce account-ing for 30 percent of that total. Consumers are increasingly doing more of their business online.

Organizations clearly understand the benefits of automating key business processes. According to a study by Cognizant’s Center for the Future of Work:

✓ Businesses are automating 25 to 40 percent of their workflows.

✓ Businesses that automate processes are reducing costs by 15 percent year over year.

✓ Half the businesses surveyed anticipated that automa-tion would significantly improve their business processes within three to five years.

Wait a second! Three to five years to see the return on invest-ment (ROI) for automation? That’s way too long in today’s competitive business environment. Unfortunately, many businesses are frequently frustrated by the large capital investments and long payback periods associated with the development of custom workflows and forms to support auto-mation. Those costs can be especially discouraging for busi-nesses that want to extend workflows to their mobile users.

Automated workflows and forms can transform a business into a more productive, responsive environment, but those business apps need to accommodate rapidly changing busi-ness and customer needs, a mobile workforce, and disparate LOB systems. In a recent survey, industry analyst IDC (www.idc.com) found that large organizations that automated their manual, error‐prone processes experienced an average ROI of 537 percent.

Modern business apps that support critical workflows and forms must be

✓ Automated

✓ Scalable

✓ Flexible

✓ Fast to implement

http://www.internetretailer.com

http://www.internetretailer.com

http://www.idc.com

http://www.idc.com


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Paper‐based workflows are typically fast and easy to imple-ment but do not scale well and are, by their nature, manual (see Figure 1‐1).

Many businesses buy or build “one‐off” custom apps for specific business workflows. Although such solutions can be highly automated, they are not easily modified, do not scale well, can take months or even years to implement, and can be prohibitively expensive to develop and maintain.

Figure 1-1: Business‐workflow traits.


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A business process apps solution provides automation, scalability, flexibility, and agility to support, optimize, and transform critical business processes. Such a solution can be implemented quickly and easily — without specialized appli-cation development skills to help your organization realize a significant ROI from your automation initiatives more quickly.

Dalkia automates PO process to improve efficiency and

customer serviceDalkia, a division of the Veolia Environment Group, is a leading pro-vider of energy services in Europe. In Slovakia, the company supplies heating systems and energy for com-mercial and domestic properties.

Dalkia issues 10,000 to 12,000 pur-chase orders (POs) every year, for everything from company vehicles to tiny valves for heating units. However, the company’s manual processes for creating, authorizing, and managing POs were inefficient and created several challenges.

First, the process took too long. Employees had to print a form, manu-ally fill in details of what they wanted to purchase, and physically take the document to the appropriate man-agers for approval. Between two and five different signatures were required on each PO form, depend-ing on the value of the item to be purchased.

After a form had all the necessary signatures, someone had to retype it into the company’s Microsoft Dynamics enterprise resource plan-

ning (ERP) system. As a result, POs frequently took a week or longer to be created, approved, and issued.

The second challenge was more troublesome. With the existing pro-cess, engineers could unknowingly create POs for parts that had been discontinued, or get a digit wrong in a part number, causing the incorrect part to be delivered. If the component was required for a specific repair or installation project at a commercial or domestic property, these errors caused costly delays and poor cus-tomer service.

Solution

Working with K2, K2 partner GRADIENT Slovakia (w w w . gradientecm.com), and other third‐party suppliers, Dalkia Group in Slovakia designed and implemented a number of automated K2 work-flows. Chief among these applica-tions was a new PO management process, which was tightly inte-grated with Microsoft’s SharePoint, Dynamics ERP, and Active Directory systems.

http://www.gradientecm.com

http://www.gradientecm.com


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The first and most evident ben-efit that Dalkia experienced was dramatic process acceleration. Employees now enter their purchase requirements into an electronic form, which is then automatically routed to the correct managers for digital authorization. No one needs to reenter information because all data in approved PO forms passes directly into the company’s central ERP system.

“It used to take around a week for POs to be raised [issued],” said Filip Legény, IT project manager at Dalkia in Slovakia. “If everyone is at his or her desk, the approval of a PO can now be achieved in as little as 10 minutes.”

The most significant benefit of the K2 workflow is the improvement in cus-tomer service. When engineers fill in PO request forms electronically, they are given a drop‐down box showing approved components and products, and the correct part numbers are automatically applied. Therefore, items can be sourced more accu-rately, enabling customer projects to go ahead on schedule.

In addition, the company expects to save money from the use of K2 processes. The K2 solution provides purchasing managers with a clear overview of all POs issued. They can easily see which products or parts

are requested most frequently and then negotiate bulk purchasing deals with suppliers. In this way, Dalkia can optimize its stock and operate more cost efficiently.

Previously, when engineers cre-ated POs for equipment, they didn’t always know exactly which parts Dalkia already had in its in‐house stockrooms. So they could waste time and money creating a PO for a specific heat pump when a similar heat pump (perhaps from a different supplier with a different part number) might already be available on the shelf. K2 gives engineers stock vis-ibility and encourages them to use parts already available, rather than make one‐off purchases at a higher unit cost.

“Now, it is much easier for engineers to see what items are in stock. That saves us money and enables us to deliver better services to our cus-tomers,” Legény said. “Definitely, our engineers can arrive at our cus-tomer sites with the right parts more quickly.”

Following the successful application of K2 in this area, Dalkia is now con-sidering rolling out similar K2‐driven processes.

“Other businesses have similar problems to us; K2 could meet their needs, too,” Legény said.


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Finance Process Improvements That Save

Time and MoneyIn This Chapter

▶▶ Giving budget owners the complete picture

▶▶ Processing expense claims more efficiently

▶▶ Working with auditors and regulators

▶▶ Automating the invoicing process

W ithin the finance department, organizations face more pressure than ever to identify gaps in their financial

framework to better manage budgets and costs. Enterprise accounting and finance systems help, but they are built to handle large‐scale processes and are not flexible enough to handle exceptions or the more granular processes without customization. Leveraging the data in enterprise accounting and finance systems for performance tracking and analysis can also be difficult and cumbersome.

In this chapter, you explore how a business process apps solution can help you maintain better control of your financial operations by incorporating your line‐of‐business (LOB) data into customized applications composed of forms, workflows, and reports that can be built without code and span your cloud and on‐premises systems.

Chapter 2


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Building Better BudgetsAccurate budgeting is vital to the success of any organiza-tion, but analyzing information across disparate systems for informed decision making can be difficult.

A business process apps solution can incorporate informa-tion scattered across your LOB systems into a single view to provide budget owners with a complete picture of the infor-mation they need to make well‐informed estimates and recom-mendations.

Managing Expense ClaimsEnsuring that expense claims are in compliance with company policies and authorized by the right people can be challenging without the right software to help.

A business process apps solution makes this important function simple through automated workflows and reports that allow you to track, collaborate, and evaluate trends on expense claims for faster processing and better projections.

Nando’s serves up success with new K2 business applications

Nando’s operates 286 restaurants across the U.K., from Aberdeen, Scotland, to Southampton, England. The first Nando’s restaurant was established in the U.K. in 1992. Since then, the company has enjoyed excep-tional success, opening many new restaurants every year. Its sustained business growth was, however, start-ing to place a strain on the company’s existing manual processes.

Nando’s finance department handles 4,000 to 6,000 invoices every month in the U.K. Before they could be paid, all

these invoices had to be allocated to specific cost centers and authorized by different people within the busi-ness, including individual restaurant managers based at locations across the country.

“We recognized that this core busi-ness process could be improved through the use of an automated workflow,” said Juan Louw, applica-tions manager at Nando’s.

The company’s expense process was similarly in need of automation.

Chapter 2: Finance Process Improvements That Save Time and Money 15

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Facilitating AuditsAudits are the bane of every finance organization’s existence, and manual, paper‐based processes exacerbate the experi-ence. Digging through file rooms and bankers’ boxes to find the information that your auditors need is time consuming and frustrating. It can also negatively impact your auditors’ overall impression of your finance organization and ultimately affect your audit assessment. And, of course, the time your auditors spend onsite waiting for your accounting team to find and produce needed documentation is billable!

Employees had to print an expense form, fill it in, get it authorized by their manager, and post it to the finance department. The finance team then had to retype the information into the system. The entire process was very slow, and errors often occurred in expense forms that took a long time to manually correct.

Solution

Nando’s used K2 to develop 12 sepa-rate workflows, which predominantly support the company’s invoice and expense‐management processes.

Today, when invoices are received, the finance team enters them into the central finance system and allocates them to the relevant cost centers. Each invoice is then automatically directed to the people who need to authorize it, and managers can either reject or approve it. Invoices for maintenance activities at restau-rants are forwarded to the restaurant manager so that the manager can verify that work has been completed satisfactorily.

The invoicing process is, therefore, not only faster but also more meticu-lously administered to improve finan-cial control.

“We don’t make payments for work that is incomplete,” Louw said.

With the new K2 expense applica-tions, employees fill in claims forms electronically. These forms are then automatically sent to the appropri-ate line managers for authorization before being passed directly to the finance team.

The automated process saves a great deal of time in the finance department because information doesn’t have to be typed into the sys-tem, and fewer human errors occur.

“We used to wait three to four weeks for expense claims to be settled,” Louw said. “Now we receive pay-ments weekly.

“As the company continues to grow, we will be able to process a larger number of invoices and expense claims each month.”


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A business process apps solution can provide complete visibility into business processes and deliver reporting capabilities that create a full audit trail and allow you to archive data even after a workflow has been deleted. Having important financial information readily available in a central electronic repository helps your accounting team to prepare for and support audits much more easily — and your auditors to complete their assessment less expensively.

Ensuring ComplianceAccording to a report in 2015 by CFO magazine (http://ww2.cfo.com/auditing/2015/05/sox‐compliance‐getting‐costly/), 67 percent of respondents in a Protiviti survey reported an increase in hours dedicated to Sarbanes‐Oxley (SOX) compliance, and 58 percent of large companies in the survey spent more than $1 million on SOX compliance over that year.

TransLink overhauls enterprise capital processes, ensuring governance,

speed, and visibilityThe South Coast British Columbia Transportation Authority (TransLink) is Metro Vancouver’s regional transportation authority, providing service to 21 municipalities situated on 2,000 square kilometers of British Columbia’s southwestern mainland.

TransLink manages a capital pro-gram exceeding $250 million per year. More than 250 capital request-ers, reviewers, and approvers — including project implementation groups and operating subsidiaries — comprise a capital portfolio of approximately 125 concurrent capital projects under challenging financial constraints. Staff at all levels of the

company — from administrative support personnel to executive and board members — collaborate on all aspects of the capital project life cycle. Almost 100 new capital proj-ects or change proposals are sub-mitted annually for consideration and approval. TransLink also has approxi-mately 2,000 purchase order requisi-tions and 25,000 invoice submissions that need to be processed every year.

Manual processes and reliance on paper documentation were leading to delays, lack of visibility, and an increased risk for lost information. TransLink wanted to ensure that pieces of work didn’t fall behind and

http://ww2.cfo.com/auditing/2015/05/sox-compliance-getting-costly/




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that bottlenecks were being identi-fied and addressed.

TransLink’s objective was to increase efficiency across its large enterprise, raising both the transpar-ency of the process and the account-ability of everyone who takes part in it. But with no consistent docu-ment version control and no central repository for completed documents, collaboration across the enterprise in a virtual team environment was extremely challenging for project managers and sponsors. Significant manual effort was spent reentering various data points across multiple disparate systems, which led to data entry errors, lack of automatic vali-dation, and long cycle times.

Solution

Dynamic Management Solutions, a trusted K2 Partner in Vancouver, col-laborated with TransLink throughout the initiative and designed, built, and deployed 11 K2 applications that automated the entire capital project life cycle — from project initiation to closure.

Cathy McLay, CFO and executive vice president, TransLink Finance and Corporate Services, sponsored the project, in which the following K2 applications were deployed:

▶✓ Capital development: Capital approval in principal submis-sions, capital approval in prin-cipal authorizations, specific project approvals, project change authorizations

▶✓ Capital asset cost control: Asset capitalizations, capital project closeout

▶✓ Purchase order requisitioning

▶✓ Supplier management: Supplier performance reviews, correc-tive action request management

▶✓ Invoice submission

▶✓ Progress draw payments

These applications not only reduced the overall cycle time per process but also created a collaboration por-tal and document repository by tak-ing advantage of TransLink’s existing SharePoint platform.

The solutions integrate with TransLink’s LOB systems, provide extensive capabilities to report on process bottlenecks, allow users to quickly and efficiently view the sta-tus of a particular submission, and support collaboration through easy‐to‐use e‐forms.

Through new administrative con-sistencies, centralization, improved reporting, and process integration, TransLink expects to save more than $330K in the first year and every year after.

The ongoing financial and collabora-tion benefits of the Enterprise Capital Process Workflow System are expected to be significantly larger than the initial one‐time and ongoing costs. The custom solution stream-lines TransLink’s processes, brings together all operating entities, and unifies hundreds of people.


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A business process apps solution can help you stay in compli-ance with SOX requirements by making sure that processes and business‐critical decisions are sent to the right people, at the right time. You can automate the SOX compliance life cycle with forms and workflows that reduce compliance costs and simplify SOX requirements by centralizing compliance data, capturing full audit trails, and automating and speeding up approval cycles. To that end, the Protiviti survey found that 58 percent of large companies surveyed had significant plans to automate more of their IT processes and controls.

Processing InvoicesPaper invoicing is inefficient and error prone. In addition to their mail handling and data‐entry activities and costs, paper invoices must be manually cross‐referenced and compared to a purchase order or contract to verify accuracy. Invoices may also require multiple levels of approval, and sending a paper invoice manually from desk to desk via interoffice mail can take weeks, further delaying payment of the invoice. Delays such as these can be costly in terms of late fees and vendor relationships.

A business process apps solution can automate, simplify, and accelerate your invoicing process through automated work-flows and approval processes. The solution can reference and scan paper invoices can be on receipt, and then attach them to electronic forms that route invoices to the right people for authorization and systems so that each invoice is correctly classified, validated, and safely stored in the system of record. After the right people approve the invoices, the information is then sent to a financial system for payment. An automated system such as this can reduce invoice processing time from weeks to days or even hours.

Business process automation with K2 solutions is solid gold for Kinross

Kinross Gold Corporation is the third‐largest gold producer in Canada. With mining operations spanning the globe, Kinross manages more than

$1 billion in capital requests each year. Previously, these requests were managed entirely by a manual process, which resulted in delays,


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duplication, chasing after signatures, and much frustration.

The first attempt by Kinross to auto-mate the capital request process consisted of a hard‐coded custom .NET solution. Although this solution improved traceability, it provided lit-tle flexibility, was entirely sequential, and offered none of the critical busi-ness process management (BPM) functionality that Kinross needed.

Describing the custom .NET solution, Chris Fraidakis, Kinross program man-ager, explains that it “was extremely difficult to manage and support, costing thousands to develop basic functionality or to implement simple changes. What’s more, it was very frustrating for the users who could not perform simple things like view-ing their tasks or approving things while on the go. The thought of try-ing to automate any other processes seemed very daunting.”

Solution

With a strong intranet program based on Microsoft SharePoint tak-ing shape, Kinross looked to several ecosystem providers to help fill the need for a robust BPM solution.

“In the end, K2 was the most feature‐rich and cost‐effective solution, and they had the strongest implementa-tion partners,” Fraidakis said.

Working with K2 partner Caprivi Solutions, Kinross has developed many business applications without the time and cost associated with custom code.

“Starting with the capital expen-diture process, we transformed a 15‐step sequential approval to a three‐tier parallel process that han-dles every step, from the mines to the board of directors,” said Fabio Casti, Principal, Caprivi Solutions. “With our agile methodology, we’ve also allowed Kinross to go beyond the basics to include post‐investment reviews, integration with enterprise resource planning (ERP) and busi-ness intelligence (BI) solutions, and health and safety checklists.”

“Users love the ability to complete their tasks on the go from any mobile device,” Casti said. “This is a key feature for a company that travels extensively and another process we have since helped to automate.”

With this success, Kinross has since automated more than a dozen pro-cesses, with many more planned.

“It has gone viral,” Fraidakis said. “With every new application we release, we get more requests from other mines and departments asking if we could do the same for them.”


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Purchasing Process Improvements for Every Company

In This Chapter▶▶ Using automated templates to create RFQs

▶▶ Issuing purchase orders

▶▶ Managing contract development, renewals, and cancellations

▶▶ Ensuring vendor performance and SLA compliance

M anaging purchasing processes, contracts, and vendor performance are important purchasing department

functions that often lack efficient, automated processes and workflows.

In this chapter, you explore purchasing process‐based work-flows and forms that can be automated with a business process apps solution.

Managing RFQsA request for quotation (RFQ) is often used to invite poten-tial vendors or suppliers to submit a bid or sales quote for a specific product or service required by an organization. When RFQ responses are received from competing vendors, a paper‐based or email copy of each vendor’s response may be routed throughout your organization for review. After a

Chapter 3


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winning quote is selected, the different vendors are notified of the outcome, often via email.

A business process automation solution can help you manage your RFQ selection workflow by routing vendors’ RFQ responses to the appropriate parties within your orga-nization for review and comment. After you select a vendor, you can use the solution to notify each vendor of the outcome.

Authorizing ExpendituresThe purchasing process in any organization can be a time‐consuming process that introduces many opportunities for inefficiencies, errors, risk, and mismanagement. Delays can be costly in terms of missed promotional opportunities or discounts, or in terms of higher prices because of “expe-dited” purchase requests that languished through a lengthy approval process. Errors on paper‐based purchase order forms may not be detected until a product is received, requir-ing rework and additional processing, causing further delays, and potentially incurring additional costs such as return freight and restocking fees. Also, unauthorized spending can cost businesses thousands of dollars each year.

RGE achieves greater efficiency and faster approval times with K2

Royal Golden Eagle (RGE) manages a group of world‐class companies specializing in resource‐based manufacturing and is supported by a workforce of more than 50,000 people. The assets held by RGE com-panies today exceed US $15 billion.

RGE’s corporate offices faced challenges related to administra-tive efficiency, relying heavily on the use of physical copies of forms and signatures. Approvals of vari-ous corporate forms from legal,

IT, and finance and accounting departments, as well as the corpo-rate investment proposal form (or “CAPEX” form), took around three to five months because key approving officers who travel frequently were unable to immediately access and sign these forms.

CAPEX approvals are essential for any project to commence (for example, equipment repair and ten-der submission), so these delays had negative, business‐wide impacts.

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A business process apps solution can eliminate unauthorized spending through automated workflows that control capital budgets and expenditures and that provide full visibility into processes. A flexible rules framework lets you define rules, such as how much one individual can approve before addi-tional authorization is required.

Solution

RGE recognized that workflow effi-ciency is key to overall business opti-mization and employee satisfaction. After evaluating a few options, K2 was chosen as the best fit because of its strong workflow engine and the fact that no additional coding was required. This would enhance RGE’s overall IT productivity because technical staff with no programming background could build extensive workflows.

Averis, RGE’s IT organization, replaced the manual CAPEX form with an online approval system built using K2 SmartForms, effec-tively digitizing the entire process. Development for the pilot phase began in December 2014 at Asia Pacific Resources International Holdings Ltd (APRIL), RGE’s pulp and paper manufacturer in Indonesia. Within six months, it went live for 300 APRIL employees.

The creation of forms through K2 required a team of users who could logically operationalize existing pro-cesses using the software’s features. It allowed this team to focus more on higher‐level and longer‐term business

needs, which included understanding user requirements, Smart Objects, the database layer, and the overall work-flow of triggering forms.

After using K2 to design and imple-ment the forms and workflows, RGE experienced a significant improve-ment in the turnaround time for approvals.

The online CAPEX system allows email approvals via computers and mobile devices, making it more con-venient for executives to approve forms on the go. With no more paperwork, administrative tracking, or delays to CAPEX approval, work on projects can start quickly. This is recognized by RGE to increase competitive advantage and business agility while preventing potential business losses.

Staff collaboration has improved as well. The online CAPEX form has a “consult” feature through which an employee can request guid-ance from colleagues outside the approval chain. With all the informa-tion being captured in the form at every stage, there is full transpar-ency and traceability throughout the organization.


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Managing ContractsContract management is an important purchasing/procurement function. A business process apps solution can help ensure that contracts are reviewed in a timely manner, through auto-mated alerts and approvals that notify the appropriate parties when a contract is up for renewal or needs to be cancelled and then keep the contract moving until the renewal or cancellation process is complete.

A contract that is simply updated and modified slightly for dif-ferent customers or clients can lead to costly errors and omis-sions. Also, it can potentially cause legal issues resulting from privacy or nondisclosure violations.

A business process apps solution can help you manage your contracts with templates that prompt users to complete custom fields in the contract document. You can also manage different document versions, facilitate and automate review cycles and approval processes, and make sure that each con-tract is automatically routed to the right person with the right information and at the right time. Often, this is where contract management falls apart. The contract management process ends with one of the parties having to print dozens of pages for manual signing. Integrating your contract management process with a digital signature provider, such as DocuSign, helps to ensure an efficient contract management process from beginning to end.

Mobinil accelerates internal processes by up to 90 percent with K2

Mobinil is the leading mobile ser-vices operator in Egypt. With more than 30 million customers, it offers mobile signal coverage for more than 99 percent of the Egyptian population.

Mobinil relied on a number of tradi-tional paper‐based processes and

suffered from all the usual chal-lenges that this creates.

“We experienced unnecessary delays, inconsistencies, lost approv-als, and a lack of governance,” explained Amir Salah, head of busi-ness solutions at Mobinil. “With our more complex processes, the

Chapter 3: Purchasing Process Improvements for Every Company 25

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Managing Vendor Performance and Service‐Level Agreements

Ensuring that your approved vendors perform as required is an important purchasing function. A business process apps solution that integrates with line‐of‐business (LOB) systems and enterprise business applications helps ensure that pur-chasing managers have access to real‐time data in order to better manage vendor performance. Examples of this data might include order history, pricing and discount levels, on‐time delivery performance, and issue tracking and resolution, among others.

In addition, service‐level agreements (SLAs) need to be regu-larly reviewed for SLA violations and enforced when the need arises. Many service vendors post SLA updates on their websites and don’t always announce important changes.

challenges were even worse. So, we had to adopt a new strategy for busi-ness process management.”

Solution

Mobinil selected K2 blackpearl because it met the company’s three primary requirements. Recalling the company’s thorough evaluation of several potential solutions, Salah said: “First, K2 blackpearl was a well‐known, proven technology; sec-ond, K2 came out on top for value for money; and finally, K2 could provide local support, which was very impor-tant for us.”

The company used K2 blackpearl to automate and simplify the creation and amendment of contracts. Many different contracts are in use across the business, and K2 ensures that employees select the correct version

every time and then submit it to the right people for authorization.

Mobinil’s employees used to spend two to three months finalizing new or amended contracts; now, the majority are completed in just 15 to 30 days. “The improvement in our contracts process is awesome,” commented Salah. “The gains in pro-ductivity were immediately observed by the company’s senior managers in almost all departments.”

Through its use of K2, Mobinil has also been able to improve the gov-ernance and management of its processes. Managers can see what stage contracts are at, at any time, without having to make lots of phone calls to different departments. And now an electronic record exists of all approvals.


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A business process apps solution can help you ensure that you always have the latest online SLAs from all your vendors, and automatically notify you when SLA exceptions or viola-tions occur, which may require action on your part, such as requesting a credit or other SLA remedy.

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DIY Process‐Based Workflows

In This Chapter▶▶ Leveraging talent throughout the digital workplace

▶▶ Supporting employees anywhere and on any device

▶▶ Transforming key processes with the business apps panacea

▶▶ Replacing “shadow IT” applications and processes with scalable solutions

I n this chapter, you explore how a “do‐it‐yourself” (DIY) business process apps solution can help jump‐start your

process improvement and process excellence initiatives.

Is Your IT Development Backlog Holding You Back?

Many businesses have traditionally viewed application devel-opment as an IT function. However, today’s digital workplace and fast‐paced global economy (see Chapter 1) requires busi-nesses to leverage an ever‐expanding base of individual tech-nical skills throughout the organization.

The reality is that IT department resources are seriously con-strained and can become bottlenecks for process improve-ment and process excellence initiatives. Many IT departments are locked into rigid software development life cycles that can take months to deliver even relatively simple business appli-cations. From requirements definition to coding, testing, and

Chapter 4


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maintenance, such formal processes — even those labeled “agile” — can be too slow and inflexible to keep up with the dynamic and rapidly evolving needs of the business. Teams of developers, business analysts, and project managers add to the cost and complexity of such projects.

But what if the individual employees in various departments throughout the organization who understand their own day‐to‐day challenges best had powerful, easy‐to‐use, drag‐and‐drop tools that enabled them to access the data and build the applications they need for themselves? A low‐code business process apps solution can empower your employees to auto-mate and optimize workflows and forms in a fraction of the time — and at a fraction of the cost — required for traditional IT development efforts. You really can do it yourself!

Overhauling Your Workflows for the Mobile Age

Businesses today are under more pressure than ever to identify process bottlenecks and inefficiencies, and eliminate them through automation. To accomplish these tasks, IT and business leaders often target manual workflows and paper‐based forms because they are cumbersome, time‐consuming, and can’t easily accommodate today’s mobile workforce and mobile consumer.

Business process apps solutions can breathe new life into tired, manual workflows. They can streamline processes and connect disparate line‐of‐business (LOB) systems so that employees can work smarter and perform tasks faster. And when business applications are supported on mobile devices, employees can work more efficiently wherever they go. However, it can be challenging for resource‐constrained IT departments to quickly design and update apps that work across multiple platforms, such as desktop and laptop com-puters, tablets, and smartphones, among others.

IT and other departments throughout your organization can benefit from a business process apps solution that simplifies the design and rollout of apps for the mobile workforce.

Chapter 4: DIY Process‐Based Workflows 29

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Demand meets modernizationWhat if an account executive needs to onboard a new cus-tomer at a sales conference, but she can’t remotely access your systems to begin the process? Her work-around is simple: She manually uploads the forms to a cloud‐based storage service before the conference and then accesses the form using her smartphone during the conference.

But how comfortable are you with work-arounds such as these? Consider the following potential issues and concerns:

✓ How long will the onboarding process be delayed until the account executive is back in the office and able to enter the information into your enterprise systems?

✓ Did the account executive obtain all the required infor-mation to onboard the new customer, or will someone have to contact the customer again?

✓ Is your new customer’s sensitive information — such as a credit application, IRS Form W‐9, and Dun & Bradstreet data — being kept private in the cloud?

✓ Is sensitive data on your employees’ smartphones encrypted?

✓ What happens if someone loses a smartphone?

✓ How do you ensure policy and regulatory compliance? How will you verify your compliance status during audits?

You’ve probably already felt the impact of similar sce-narios in your organization. According to IDG’s Enterprise Consumerization of IT in the Enterprise Study 2014:

✓ Ninety percent of employees use consumer‐oriented, cloud‐based services, like Skype and LinkedIn, for their work.

✓ Seventy‐nine percent use cloud‐based file sharing and collaboration tools, such as Dropbox, Microsoft SharePoint, or Microsoft OneDrive.

✓ Forty percent of employees use their own smartphones for work.


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The bring your own apps (BYOA) trend — an extension of the consumerization of IT and bring your own device (BYOD) — is hard evidence of what employees already know: Current busi-ness processes are not fully meeting their needs. If they were, your employees wouldn’t feel compelled to find their own solutions from outside sources.

More and more businesses are embracing the move to a mobile, digital work style. They need to support workers who are on the go, working online and off. Yet many IT leaders feel that productivity gains and other benefits of mobility remain out of reach because outdated manual processes hinder prog-ress toward modernization.

Many IT directors understand the complexity involved in connecting information from critical LOB systems to mobile workers on a variety of devices with different form factors. According to 78 percent of business managers and executives in a recent MIT Sloan Management Review survey, achieving digital transformation will become critical to their organiza-tions within the next two years. However, 63 percent said the pace of technology change in their organization is too slow. To automate a workflow with a custom business app, IT typi-cally needs to devote extensive time and costly development resources to planning, coding, testing, and rollout.

Companies embracing mobilityMobile devices may have started as a BYOD challenge for companies, but they have now found a permanent home as a productivity boost. Cloud‐based storage and apps expand the limits of what users can do with a handheld device.

According to the Intel IT Center, “Employees report saving an aver-age of 57 minutes a day using mobile devices — that’s nearly an hour

of productivity gained each day by simply providing a different way to work. Think of the productivity ben-efits you could gain by scaling this flexibility across your entire orga-nization, ultimately reducing the cost of doing business” (http://blog.azoft.com/mobile‐ business‐process‐auto mation‐with‐workflow‐examples/).

http://blog.azoft.com/mobile-business-process-automation-with-workflow-examples/






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Empowering mobile usersNumerous workflows can be created or enhanced using mobile‐centric design principles. For example:

✓ Accountants can automate various accounts receiv-able and accounts payable processes, such as customer credit applications, account management, customer and vendor onboarding, and invoice approval, so that LOB managers and other department personnel can easily complete routine finance tasks from anywhere and on any device.

✓ Purchasing departments can publish approved vendor lists and catalogs for use by different departments throughout the organization, and easily forward vendor onboarding forms and vendor compliance guides, for example, to potential new vendors.

Automating workflows to increase efficiencyHow can you quickly and affordably make your business mobile? Before answering that question, consider what a transformed, modernized business process might look like.

A modern business process app does the following:

✓ Automates workflows and forms, increasing productivity and reducing errors

✓ Eliminates manual processes and costly delays

✓ Empowers employees to work smarter and faster by pro-viding all the information they need, in context, on any device

Some examples of common workflows and processes that can be easily and affordably automated with a low‐code business process apps solution include:

✓ Account management: Get a complete view of customer information and bring the right people, approach, and solutions together to better meet customer needs.


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✓ Billing: Reduce errors, expedite revenue generation, and more efficiently manage billing through workflows that supply the right data to the right people in the billing process.

✓ Purchasing: Track, report, automate, and correlate inventory to purchasing workflows to ensure that the supply chain continues to run efficiently.

Building Business Apps that Transform Finance and Purchasing

Many businesses have found process nirvana with custom, easy‐to‐use business applications that can run on any device — from a browser to a smartphone. These apps address specific LOB needs in a way that can dramatically increase efficiency.

The promised, transformative results include:

✓ Streamlined processes

✓ Empowered mobile workers and customers

✓ Powerful insight into business trends

✓ Better, data‐driven decision making

No doubt, businesses are always looking for ways to work smarter and faster. They need tools that allow them to quickly create system‐spanning forms, and they need reliable work-flows to securely deliver information to the right people at the right time.

For example, customer onboarding apps might need to use data from across services and systems — such as Box, CRM systems, and Microsoft SharePoint — whether on premises or in the cloud. To be effective, business apps should accom-modate any system that users rely on and should not require complex coding (see Figure 4‐1).


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Most businesses can’t afford to design and maintain multiple, customized versions of every app for different form factors. Every small update would require another round of develop-ment changes, testing, and distribution.

Businesses are turning to low‐code, drag‐and‐drop software solutions and tools that support fast, responsive app design. As a result, these businesses are able to roll out new or updated apps rapidly, for all form factors.

Responsive design is an approach to web design that opti-mizes a website or web‐based application for optimal viewing and navigation on any device or form factor.

Managing and reporting capabilities are in high demand as well. A good management dashboard allows managers to view and act on all tasks from a central location, while detailed out‐of‐the‐box reporting and scorecards display how their processes are performing and helps them identify trends or efficiency gaps that can improve risk management and fore-casting.

An agile business process apps solution with these charac-teristics delivers value to end users and businesses in days or weeks, instead of months, and businesses report drastic reductions in their development costs.

Figure 4-1: K2 business process apps connect users on any device to systems on premises and in the cloud.


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Future Proofing with Scalable Apps You Can Build Yourself

As businesses grow, their business applications must scale easily to support new and emerging needs. Current “shadow IT” applications and processes — which exist in organiza-tions far too frequently — can be critical to everyday business workflows, but are unknown to, and therefore unsupported by, corporate IT departments. These applications and pro-cesses may consist of elaborate spreadsheets that have been built, maintained and “password‐protected” by individual employees over the years, or cloud‐based services and appli-cations such as Box, Dropbox, and OneDrive.

Deploying a low‐code business process apps solution empow-ers employees in every department to replace these shadow IT applications and processes with scalable front‐end applica-tions that integrate easily with complex, disparate backend systems — that they can build themselves!

IFCO streamlines account management and automates processes

IFCO Systems is an international logistics service provider with more than 210 locations worldwide and annual revenues of more than $735 million. In the United States, IFCO provides a national network of pal-let management services. With more than 125 million pallets sorted, repaired, and reissued annually, IFCO is the market leader in this industry.

IFCO was dealing with siloed infor-mation, a lack of process visibility, and a heavy administrative load.

“Our sales teams are constantly bringing on more customers and vendors, so our turnaround time for

account processing needed to be fast,” says Chuck Koch, Director of Information Technology, IFCO Systems NA, Inc. “However, due to rapid growth over the years, we were fighting huge inefficiencies in our processes and suffering from multiple versions of the truth when it came to account information.”

When a new customer or vendor was being onboarded with the com-pany, information was typically sub-mitted to an account setup specialist via fax or email. The information then had to be validated and checked for completeness, which sometimes


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(continued)

included back‐and‐forth communi-cations to the account originator. After everything was validated and approved, the information then had to be entered into the company’s CRM, financial, order management, and proprietary operational systems.

The manual entry in multiple systems was time consuming, resulted in mis-takes, and led to inconsistent data. Finding information was sometimes a chore because different systems may have held different data on the same customer. Inconsistencies in account information were espe-cially troublesome if one system was updated and another was not.

The process also relied on emails and didn’t have automatic work-flows in place, so processes were often inconsistent and provided little visibility. Approvals and task comple-tion could be slow because people were keeping their own work lists, and misunderstandings sometimes accompanied expectations.

Solution

IFCO’s new K2‐enabled IFCOLogix system streamlines the management of customer and vendor information across multiple LOB applications, and it provides consistency in data quality and auditability.

“We saw the potential for efficiency gains with a system that would auto-mate our processes and eliminate errors and redundant tasks,” Koch said. “K2 enabled us to create some-thing precisely suited to our systems and our business requirements.”

Rather than enter information in three systems, IFCO general manag-ers and account managers can enter information in a single InfoPath form (pulled from SharePoint) and count on that data to be consistent across all the company’s LOB systems.

“Now we have one point of entry, so data only has to be entered once. The workflow takes care of the rest,” Koch said.

“In the first year of operation, we automated more than 9,000 new account requests and updated approval processes. By eliminating duplicate data entry, faxing, emailing forms, manual data validation, and error resolution for each instance, we have experienced a substantial time savings as well as a significant improvement in overall data quality across the enterprise. This auto-mation makes us more effective in where we spend our time by allow-ing people to focus on more value‐driven activities; it improves visibility and reporting; and the data valida-tion rules significantly reduce back‐office administrative issues.”

The system automatically routes documents and forms to the appro-priate approvers, and upon comple-tion of the workflow, K2 takes care of creating or updating account infor-mation in all the dependent systems. The solution provides visibility and tracking, notifications and escala-tions, and reporting capabilities.

“With the enhanced reporting capa-bilities of K2, we are able to easily


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identify process bottlenecks. This gives us greater visibility into our account onboarding process while providing us with necessary data for identifying potential improvements,” Koch said.

The account management workflow module of IFCOLogix was easy to build, Koch said, with K2’s simple, intuitive tools. The solution brings together technologies the company was already using — SharePoint, Dynamics CRM, Dynamics SL — and now IFCO is using K2 to bring efficiency into other parts of the business.

“People think about processes and information in very different ways. You can have two products that do the same thing, yet they may go about it in very different ways,” Koch said. “K2’s process‐activity‐event approach is in line with how we think about processes, so the learn-ing curve is short.”

IFCO has also implemented new K2‐based solutions for credit memo approvals and is working on an AP invoice approval process.

(continued)

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Building the Business Case for Process Transformation

In This Chapter▶▶ Driving revenue‐growth opportunities

▶▶ Delivering an intuitive and flexible customer experience

▶▶ Aligning internal and customer‐facing processes

I n this chapter, you discover how business process trans-formation can radically improve internal efficiency and

increase revenue opportunities for your business.

Focusing on Revenue Growth Opportunities

The case for business process transformation is often built on opportunities for cost reduction and process improvement, but a far more compelling case for executives today centers on revenue growth.

This means focusing on processes that accelerate revenue growth while protecting existing revenue streams. When engineered effectively, such processes can reduce costs and improve efficiency by reducing or eliminating workflow bottlenecks and manual errors, and net significant revenue growth through the creation and realization of new revenue opportunities.

Chapter 5


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Protecting existing revenue streams requires a business pro-cess apps solution with deep integration to corporate back‐end systems and cloud applications and services that your business may already be using. Such integration capabilities provide a way for businesses to centralize and control the data in business apps while maintaining the confidentiality and integrity of the information in its system of record. The capability to securely route information to the right people improves business efficiency while ensuring that governance and compliance requirements are enforced.

Low‐code business apps solutions with drag‐and‐drop design tools are ideal for building agile processes. Business users who regularly work with, and therefore best understand, the necessary workflows and processes can quickly and easily build flexible, customizable work apps and forms that acceler-ate key processes and increase revenue growth opportunities without disrupting existing revenue streams.

Improving Planning with Better Financial Insights

Finance departments can support better decision making throughout their organizations with data about past perfor-mance and financial outlooks. Such deep financial insights empower managers across all business functions to improve business resource planning in their respective areas of responsibility. Creating process-based workflows and forms that integrate with financial systems can make this data actionable.

A study by The Hackett Group found that “64 percent of finance organizations believe that their functional analytics improve the quality of their decision making” and that a “lack of integration [with other internal finance processes or enterprise planning and operational systems] contributes to inefficient, ineffective outcomes” (Financial Planning and Analysis: Key Enablers for Improving Performance and Value, The Hackett Group, August 2015).

Chapter 5: Building the Business Case for Process Transformation 39

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Aligning Processes Throughout Your Organization for Operational Excellence

Look across your entire organization and value chain for busi-ness process transformation opportunities that will drive innovation.

A business process apps solution that is powerful enough to solve any process‐based need while being agile, flexible, and easy to use, can be a competitive differentiator for businesses that use it to transform key processes to achieve operational excellence.

The right business process apps solution can be the differen-tiator that helps your organization increase revenue oppor-tunities. Now more than ever before, companies need to view business process transformation through a lens that captures more than just the automation of core processes. The solution you choose should also have the speed, agility, and flexibility needed to adapt to your organization’s unique requirements.


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Ten Keys for Transforming Business Processes

In This Chapter▶▶ Empowering your users

▶▶ Integrating systems and tools securely and easily

▶▶ Enabling standardization, mobility, and measurable results

I n this chapter, I present ten important capabilities for you to consider when choosing a business process apps solu-

tion for your organization.

Empower Users with Easy, Do‐It‐Yourself Tools

A low‐code business process apps solution must provide easy‐to‐use, visual design tools that enable subject matter experts (SMEs) and business users to quickly and easily build automated forms and workflows themselves, without extensive — and expensive — IT development.

Automate Manual, Error‐Prone Processes

Manual, paper‐based workflows and forms are inefficient and error prone. Automate finance and procurement processes to eliminate opportunities for costly mistakes and drive greater efficiency throughout your organization.

Chapter 6


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Go Beyond Process Automation with Process Improvement

Automating a poorly designed manual process won’t fix your existing process problems, but finding a solution that pro-vides insight into bottlenecks and other process pitfalls and inefficiencies will. Choose a business process apps solution that provides metrics and reporting dashboards that you can use to look for opportunities to improve all your processes.

Integrate Seamlessly with Existing Systems and Reusable Components

Reusable building blocks that connect to external systems like Salesforce or Microsoft Dynamics CRM have been established and can be reused across any number of interfaces and pro-cesses. This way, a new integration point does not need to be built every time integration to a particular system is needed. This reuse of the integration point lets you quickly and easily pull together information from disparate systems into a single view for easy approval, analysis, and decision making.

Another advantage of reusable building blocks is that all integration points with external systems look and behave in the same way. You can use data from disparate systems — such as Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, SAP, Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft SharePoint, Oracle, Box, Google Drive, and more — easily without having to learn the nuances that pertain to a particular technology. Business users can then access critical information from these systems without ever having to access them or learn how these systems operate. Interfaces and process designs can be reused across multiple applications as well, ensuring that as technical assets are developed, applications become faster and easier to build.

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Deliver Information at the Point of Need

Your business users must be able to easily access data from multiple sources with your business process apps solution, thereby eliminating the need to have lots of technical knowl-edge to access source systems of record, such as customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications.

Enable Advanced Analytics and Reporting

A business process apps solution should connect disparate systems, applications, and data throughout the organization and in the cloud to enable powerful insights and better deci-sion making. Intuitive, graphical dashboards and reporting capabilities are a must.

Drive Change with Flexibility and Agility

A business process apps solution should be scalable in a way that allows standardization across departments and regions. It should also be agile and flexible enough to allow processes across the business to be automated in a short amount of time and updated just as easily.

Balance Power and SimplicityA business process apps solution doesn’t need to be mas-sive or complicated and long‐drawn‐out to be successful; it just needs to solve the challenges faced by the business. The platform should be able to handle a wide variety of process workflows and complex event handling and rules, as well as to manage data across disparate sources.


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Provide Secure Mobile Access to Forms, Workflows, and Data

Today’s business users expect to be able to work from any-where, at any time, on any device — whether it’s a laptop computer, smartphone, or tablet.

Beyond simply downloading a printable form from Box or Google Drive, a business process apps solution should enable a purchasing manager, for example, to quickly and easily complete an online form, such as a purchase order, on the purchasing manager’s mobile phone, and automatically route it to the appropriate department managers for approval.

Measure and Report Your Results

A business process apps solution should be able to provide real process improvement that can be measured. The plat-form should also provide visibility into the process itself, immediate insight into the cause of roadblocks, and the capa-bility to actually measure how instances are performing in terms of cycle time, data expectations, and consistent use. This approach enables business users to make objective judg-ment calls and decisions with regard to change.

K2’s approach meets all these requirements. The K2 business process apps solution offers the business process improve-ments that organizations need. It also provides businesses with a continuous innovation capability that allows them to easily change processes in the future. K2 has a set of easy drag‐and‐drop tools that companies can use to build low‐code, scalable applications composed of workflows and forms that automate business processes and easily integrate with industry‐leading IT systems. Finally, K2 solutions allow pro-cess management to become what it should be: an integral part of knowledge capture, process improvement, compliance management, and business agility.


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