Appropriation Request

The process behind appropriating the funds to enable key business strategies can too often be bogged down in an unstructured and confusing paper process of the appropriation request. 

Key to the success of the system is for the requestor and the approver(s) to have as much complete and accurate information as possible to make a decision.

Business Problem

Some of the challenges to be addressed by an appropriation request system include:

Complete and Accurate Forms - Often times, the completion of the appropriation form itself can be confusing and error-prone. Incomplete or inaccurate forms result in wasted time and effort to process the forms.

Necessary Supporting Documents – Similar to the form, the number and type of documents that might need to be attached to the appropriation request for supporting the business decision are often incorrect not attached resulting in more wasted time and effort of the approvers.

Dynamic Approval Processes – Business process require that rules and signature requirements will change and adapt with the business itself. Manual assignment of approvers is very subjective and difficult to structure.

Signature Reduction – As with the dynamic approval process, many times signatures are added whether needed or not just in case and result in additional time and effort wasted.

 

Active Wizard Solution

The Active Wizard was created to address dynamic form and workflow requirements. By providing a dynamic form (ActiveForm) with an intuitive wizard approach, requestors are quickly able to accurately complete the form and are prompted for the required documents. Business Rules are built around the form to provide dynamic workflow (ActiveWorkFlow) capable of addressing a dynamic approval process as well as signature reduction requirements. Key components of the solution include:

Question Branching – ActiveForm provides a wizard-like approach to develop question branches to simplify the data collection requirements.

Attaching documents to the form – ActiveForm provides for documents to be attached manually within the form or via a query against the Documentum repository.

Form tied to Workflow – Questions with ActiveForm provide for additional questions for workflow that might not exist on the form.

Dynamic Rules-Based Workflow – Approvers are assigned based on data collected within the form and managed within groups. Work-load balancing allows work to be divided in a group based on data collected in the form.

Intuitive Approval – The Active Wizard provides a customized approval screen to review the form, attached documents and related workflow within a single, easy to use interface. This interface is also available for Documentum via the Active Wizard for Webtop Connector.

 

Business Impact

  • Accurate and complete appropriation request forms
  • Reduced completion time
  • Reduced approval time
  • Dynamic signature assignment
  • Signature reduction
  • Quicker business decisions and implementations