The company digitalizes the order inspection flow for system development, which enables approval and final approval of orders to be made outside the office. The period to the final approval shortens by more than 50%.
Q. What kind of work are you using Questetra for?
We at Applied Technology Co., LTD develop information systems. We support many government agencies and companies, covering a wide range of fields, including manufacturing, civil engineering and construction, disaster prevention, and the environment.
Currently, for companies in the construction industry we are focused on proposing „toBIM“ (Building Information Modeling), a kind of initiative to collect and visualize information on each process in construction, from the initial design stage to more detailed design, construction, and operation after completion. This initiative is expected to eliminate the understanding gap between the client and the contractor, improve quality, and shorten the deadline for delivery.
We use Questetra BPM Suite to inspect orders, make purchase decisions and make contracts for system development.
Q. What are the challenges in the order inspection flow?
Orders for software development are inspected by the sales and development divisions, and the orders are finally approved by the executive officer. The development department inspects the orders to see whether the development system and schedule have any problems.
In the past, we prepared printed order applications to circulate for review based on a format provided by Excel. Therefore, our main problem was that it was taking longer to make the final approval.
It usually took about a week for approval to be obtained because it was done only when the people in charge were in the office.
Q. How exactly do you use Questetra BPM?
Instead of circulating paper application forms, we have created a system where the series of processes from an application, approval to the final approval are done in a Web browser.
With a workflow diagram on Questetra BPM Suite we can complete 70% of the circulation flow. After that, we set up for applications, approvals, and final approval on the settings screen.
After we put this system into practice, the person involved in the inspection can make approvals and the final approval with smartphones and other devices from outside the office. Consequently, the process from the application to the final approval can be done in 2-3 days. We have worked on automation as well.
The files attached to the application are very important in providing the basis for approval and decision making. The files were manually stored on Google Drive for the purpose of managing the evidence which is used for inspection. To avoid this, we’ve created a mechanism where files are automatically uploaded to Google Drive when final approval is given.
This mechanism was achieved by simply putting the item Service Task (Google Drive: File Upload) in the workflow, and configuring it.
Q. Do you have any requests?
Regarding the Questetra BPM Suite specification, we would like you to add more automatic processing items.
In the future, we plan to further promote automation in order to reduce the burden on our employees and errors in operations as much as possible. Although we are using the published automatic processing items and sometimes we add minor modifications to them, the limitation of 10 items for registration is starting to become an obstacle for our automation plans. We hope to be able to add more automatic processing items in the future.
