| CASE STUDIES | September 2006 |
BPM on the Tube...
THE focus on Business Process Management (BPM) as an organisational discipline has grown rapidly. It makes sense that business process management is moving to the forefront of executive agendas because processes are the foundation of any organisation and business processes influence all of an organisation’s key performance objectives – including customer service, financial performance, compliance, productivity, and competitive advantage. How well these processes are executed ultimately determines the success or failure of an organisation.
Along with this increased focus on process management and improvement has come an evolution in the technology available to help automate, integrate, monitor, and adjust processes. The market for BPM software and related services is growing at a rate of 15-35 per cent a year according to various analyst forecasts. This growth is driven largely by the fact that the technology is maturing and there are numerous end-user case studies that validate that it works. BPM software has been proven to increase efficiency, control, and agility across mission-critical processes, and that has resulted in a significant return on investment and a competitive lead for the early adopters of the technology. One such case study is London Underground.
London Underground Limited (LUL) was formed in 1985, but its history dates back to 1863 when it was created as the world’s first underground railway. London Underground operates the
Tube in London and today, is a major business with over three million passenger journeys per day, 275 stations, and more than 400 trains.
Challenge
In 2001, London Underground identified a problem with its Incident Reporting process – a process that tracks any operational incident related to the physical system, tracks, stations, and trains. Incidents can range from broken down trains, to a passenger injury, or even faulty escalators – anything that impacts the service or safety of London Underground services must be reported and managed.
In the past, these incidents were recorded on paper forms and passed between relevant London Underground staff and third parties. This system was found to be inefficient with the potential for errors. In addition, this paper-based approach provided no simple visibility of all the incidents across London Underground, nor enabled the status of incidents to be quickly determined. London Underground recognised it needed a way to improve its procedures to track and respond to all incidents more effectively, in order to maximise safety and minimise service interruptions for its passengers. From a financial perspective, it also needed a solution that would allow timely assessments of incident-related costs, in order to keep overall cost to a minimum.
Solution
In 2002, London Underground decided to use Metastorm BPM to improve its Incident Reporting process, known internally as EIRF. Using EIRF, more than 3,000 users across LUL can submit incidents electronically. London Underground’s employees enter incident details in an electronic form and depending on the type of incident – age, status and priority – it is either tracked for reporting purposes or escalated for action. Metastorm BPM manages the different types of reports and routes them accordingly.
Metastorm BPM has also been deployed to automate a process known as “minor works.” London Underground’s minor works process tracks and manages work requests and approvals for infrastructure upgrades on trains. Automating this process using Metastorm enables the organisation to better compare price proposals and completion times. Overall, the automation helps to ensure suppliers are meeting contractual obligations set forth.
Results
The Incident Reporting system allows London Underground to collect all the information it needs for any given incident and reduces the potential for human error in filling out forms manually. Metastorm BPM is also used to notify LUL’s other systems and electronically transmit information on particular incidents. This helps London Underground recover costs from other agencies involved in incidents.
The Metastorm BPM system has helped London Underground to increase the efficiency and productivity of its Information Management department. As a result, LUL is able to process over 400 incidents per day. The new automated process enables the organization to focus on improving service performance by maximising safety and minimising service interruptions. “Our electronic incident reporting process is a critical operational system within London Underground and enables us to focus on improving service performance,” stated Anthony Loraine, EIRF Project Manager, London Underground. “The system needs to be available 24x7 and Metastorm BPM gives us the ability to meet this need.”
Leveraging the Value of BPM
Business Process Management software provides the right formula for delivering value – a low up-front investment, a fast implementation, low maintenance requirements, and a flexible framework that allow organisations to leverage the solution across multiple business processes. And organisations like London Underground are proof that BPM does deliver.
Photo: (c) Transport for London 2005
.. and BPM in healthcare
UNICHEM is a leading distributor and wholesaler of pharmaceutical, medical and healthcare products in the UK. The company offers a high level of service and provides a full complement of value-added services to pharmacies, including innovative marketing support; commercial support services and ethical compliance and data services.
Challenge
Effective management of core processes is a key focus for UniChem, and a process of particular concern was its Trading Agreement Proposal (TAP) process. The TAP process is a critical set of procedures related to bringing on new customers and agreeing to the contract terms. In order to get authorization on a trading agreement proposal, it must go through a variety of people within UniChem’s Sales and Finance departments for analysis, sign-off and approval.
UniChem processes approximately 30 TAPs per week and were using a five-page paper form with stapled attachments that was physically walked around the company for multiple approvals. The manual nature of this process led to inefficiencies including delays due to lost paper and lengthy approvals which in turn sometimes led to a loss of business.
To address these issues and to streamline the TAP process as well as other critical business processes, UniChem turned to Business Process Management (BPM) software from Metastorm.
Solution
By implementing the Metastorm BPM™ suite, the company has transformed its TAP procedures into an automated, streamlined and highly efficient process.
Once a customer agrees to the particular terms and conditions of a contract, TAPs are initiated electronically and automatically routed to be signed off and passed to the finance department for analysis and authorization. The capability of Metastorm BPM goes beyond just routing the TAP – anyone involved in the process now has complete visibility of its progress. This visibility allows anyone to immediately address questions on the status or content of a TAP, and this ability greatly enhances both internal efficiency and productivity as well as overall customer satisfaction. Additional functionality includes an audit trail, the ability to search and analyze TAPs, and the ability to automatically alert managers to potential bottlenecks in the process.
Once a TAP is approved, it is routed back through Metastorm BPM to the Sales administration team and a letter is generated and sent to the customer notifying them that their contract terms have been agreed but require customer sign-off before being implemented. If a TAP was rejected, it gets sent back to the initiator and is maintained in the system’s data repository for future analysis and a complete history on all activity.
Results
Using Metastorm BPM, UniChem has transformed a process that was extremely manual into a standardized, automated process that maintains and tracks activity from the date a trading agreement proposal is initiated through the duration of the approval cycle. The electronic nature of the new TAP form ensures the right information is being captured and as a result, TAPs can move forward without delays. It has also enabled UniChem to put the sign-off decisions into the hands of the Sales Managers in the field by enabling increased visibility into what their team members are submitting resulting in more informed decision-making.
With Metastorm BPM, UniChem gained a single repository for all TAP information and a complete electronic audit trail on all process activity with the ability to quickly and easily identify where TAPs are in the process and therefore identify any potential bottlenecks.
Based on its success with TAP, UniChem plans to deploy additional processes that can be standardized on Metastorm BPM. The company has established a top-level team across various departments to generate ideas and manage the use of Metastorm BPM across the business. The “New Customer Account” process is the next in line to be deployed which is a follow-on from the TAP process but also has other entry points. This is currently a paper process that requires data checks, data set-up and sign-off from various people in Finance. Visibility into the progress of a new account is currently poor and is not standardized across the different account types. The automation and electronic enablement of functions within this process is very important since its current inefficiencies can lead to a loss of business due to accounts not being opened in time.
UniChem has been extremely pleased with how quickly and easily it has been able to automate and improve processes using the Metastorm BPM solution.
Metastorm plc. www.metastorm.com
London Underground Ltd. www.tfl.gov.uk/tube/
UniChem. www.unichem.com
