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Manifesting Process

  • 28/08/2017
  • Posted by: Sheryl Newman
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Case Study: Manifest Process

A global provider of engineering products and services to the energy industry

Summary

The Processes

  • Goods manifesting process

The Pain Points

  • Inefficient business processes relied on paperwork and email
  • Poor audit trails
  • Increasing regulated organisational procedures required business change

The Benefits

  • Replaces paper and email-based processes with electronic workflow
  • Simple to use tool
  • 75% quicker to build new workflows

The next steps

  • The application is being considered for other processes within the system.

The Challenge

As an existing user of Office 365 and SharePoint Online, part of the challenge for the IT Manager of this Energy organisation was a way to further streamline their existing business processes.  In particular their Manifesting Process.  Despite having an existing Manifest process in place this was heavily paper based and therefore open to error. The use of FlowForma allowed them to establish greater control of this process.  Achieving this through a combination of permission driven steps, questions and associated business rules. 

The Solution

The Manifesting process initially seemed  straightforward and well defined.  However, because of the existing process being paper-based, it was open to manipulation, something this organisation wanted to avoid.  The process itself was made up of several steps; Create, Submitted to Stores, Assigned for Picking and Packing, Verification, Ready for Despatch, Despatched, Delivered and/or Cancelled.

A working session was held to build the process. Despite some of the intricacies within the process and multiple stakeholders, the process took just 3 days to create.

Once the store manager allocates a user to pull together the Manifest, the recipient is notified and assigned responsibility of the ‘Assigned for Picking and Packing’ step. 

This step in the process, when paper based, would result in the assigned user taking the paper Manifest to the store to pick out the necessary goods.  The use of a tablet would work in place of the paper Manifest. This allows the user to have the same information to hand as they would if the paper based process was used. Furthermore, being electronic, the status of each item and therefore, the overall status of the Manifest can be tracked and managed more effectively.

If the goods are delivered using their own transportation, the driver would be issued with a tablet. This means the actual delivery date can be recorded within the FlowForma application. Furthermore, the introduction of ‘wet signature’ that was specifically developed with this company in mind, was incorporated into the application.  The driver delivering the Manifest goods can obtain a signature from the ‘Delivered to’ destination therefore,  meeting the requirements defined by the organisation.

Upon completion, the Manifest is not only ‘Submitted to Stores’ for allocation, but a pdf copy of the Manifest is created.  Whilst this is something the organisation wanted to avoid doing longer term, they saw this as a way with which to get users bought into a fully automated process knowing that they would have comfort that a paper based copy of the Manifest was produced, this would however be disabled in due course.

The Outcome

Whilst FlowForma has allowed this organisation to streamline their Manifesting process, there was an added benefit. The FlowForma ODataFeed and Power BI through Office 365, has meant that they can report on all Manifests and their status, therefore, providing greater visibility. The solution meets the needs of regulators and auditors who wish to see more formalised processes in place. Greater efficiency is also achieved replacing paper trails with electronic workflow.

 

To find out more about Flowforma click here.

Next Steps

The success of the Manifesting process has resulted in this organisation considering other business processes that can be replicated within the application, the most recent of which being a ‘Safety Observation’ which provides users with quick and easy access to record any safety concerns or successes through the mobile app. 

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