Over the past 24 months, the company has started to implement workflow processes in its accounting and human resources (HR) operations.“Efficiently automating business processes is a key strategic initiative that allows us to stay ahead of our competitors,” says Bob Castle, vice president of operations and chief information officer. After reviewing more than 70 solutions, Roland chose Invensys Skelta, based in Bangalore, India. Roland based the decision in part on Skelta’s workflow, document management and Microsoft Dynamics GP integration. “One of the key reasons we chose Skelta was because of the underlying Microsoft .Net Framework,” says Diane Bullock, business systems manager at Roland.Roland first deployed workflow processes to automate its vendor payments. This includes an audit trail that forces appropriate sign-offs on payments. “All users have the means to annotate, highlight, version and search documents in the process,” says Bullock. “There is an extensive role-based view of accounts payable data, and documents are available, ensuring that only users with appropriate privileges view the data.”Roland has also implemented workflow for employee evaluations. In both cases, employees had to change their processes to comply with the automated system. In the case of vendor payments, the workflow simplified processes for users, thus eliminating any change management issues. With the employee evaluations, the process required greater communication.“The change was a lot easier with the accounting team, since we had end-users who wanted the process. They were excited about the automated process, so the change was well received,” says Bullock. “For the performance evaluation, it was more difficult, since people were more accustomed to e-mailing the evaluations. We had to sell people on the reason behind it to get people on board.”Related Feature - Using Workflow to Bolster Plant PerformanceTo read the feature article relating to this story, go towww.automationworld.com/feature-7518.
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