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Business Situation:
WSI was originally hired to convert a
completely paper, manual system into an automated paperless
based system that Bilbrey Insurance Services, Inc. (BISI) would
use to run the day-to-day operations of their company.
Major Goals:
- Develop a system that would allow BISI
personnel to perform their jobs efficiently.
- Automate as many processes as possible to
eliminate and reduce the number of repetitive tasks that
personnel performed.
- Push as many data entry tasks as possible
back to BISI’s clients allowing BISI personnel to focus on
business tasks.
- Develop a system that would reduce the
number of personnel necessary to run the business operations.
Solution:
WSI set out to create an environment that
would allow BISI to accomplish the goals that they wished to
achieve. As the exclusive architects for this transformation,
WSI had the major say in the solution that was created
throughout the entire process.
It was determined early on that the
majority of BISI’s goals would be best accomplished by a phased
approach. This was determined to be the best route due to the
large expense that the entire project would cost. By using a
phased approach, this would allow that cost to be spread out
over a period of time. In addition, the phased approach was
determined to be the best approach so that the system could be
built, tested and actually see results quickly rather than
having to wait until the entire system was built. This also
allowed for freedom and flexibility in the design process that
allowed for changes to be made as any unforeseen problems were
encountered.
BISI first identified those business tasks
that they felt would give them the most return from being put
into a system. As part of this process, WSI sat down with BISI
and helped them weed out those tasks that were too aggressive or
didn’t seem to present a good return to be included in the first
phase. WSI then developed an application for these business
tasks.
After completion of the first phase, a
series of additional phases were begun and completed, that
either enhanced or added a whole new business process to the BISI application. After completion of these first few phases,
BISI staff began to see some real efficiencies and automation
that allowed them to grow their business significantly without
having to take on any additional staff.
The next goal to be attacked was that of
pushing as much data entry responsibility back to BISI’s
clients, thus allowing BISI personnel to focus on business tasks
and not data entry. It was determined that this goal could be
best accomplished by building a web based application. This
would allow BISI’s clients to perform data entry tasks that they
normally did on paper forms and mailed into BISI. These data
entry tasks would then go directly into BISI’s production
database where instead of having to re-key paper forms, BISI
personnel would inspect the data that was being submitted and
approve or reject the entry. This allowed BISI to save a
significant amount of time on a task that was vital to business.
The next goal that BISI had was to make
life with their vendors as efficient as possible. To this
extent, BISI has begun developing an extranet system to enhance
data sharing and business processing with it vendors. This
includes sharing of data, reports and business decisions.
At this time, BISI continues to examine
their current business processes for any additional tasks that
need to be put into the application.
Benefits:
BISI is in the process of automating all
processes resulting in the ability to grow their business
without taking on additional staff and even not having to
replace staff who leave the company. Relationships with clients
and vendors have been enhanced due to the increased
functionality that they both encompass.
Technical Information:
Business Application – This application
was originally developed in Microsoft Access 2.0 using DAO as
the data access method. The application has since been converted
to an Access 97 format.
Database – When the application was
originally built, an Access database was used to store all data.
As the database continued to grow all data was transferred into
a SQL Server 7.0 database that has since been migrated to a SQL Server 2000 database.
Internet/Extranet Systems – Running on an
IIS Server, all pages were developed using Microsoft Visual
InterDev.
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