BPM to the rescue

Cardinal Logistics Management wants to streamline the way requests are handled between its corporate office and field personnel, which varies from faxes to e-mail to phone calls.

"Each department had its own processes," Jonathan Turner, Cardinal's MIS director, explains. "There was no visibility into the system, and field users were constantly calling in to check on the status of various requests. Inevitably, requests got lost in the shuffle."

Cardinal is a transportation solutions provider that uses shipping resources, industry expertise and technology to help companies optimize their supply and demand chains. Most of its employees work on site at customer locations, with a limited number of staff housed at corporate headquarters to administer such functions as IT, accounting, maintenance and human resources.

To solve its workflow problem, Cardinal chose iApprove business process management (BPM) software from Buoy5, which provides form creation, routing definition and tracking tools.

"The process right now is very manual, and efficiency is hard to track," says Turner. "With the new system, we'll be able to track the time each application is held at each processing step, and field managers will be able to use our intranet site to know where each application is within the process."

Turner says Cardinal chose the solution because the software is easy to use and set up. "Also, with the ability to add custom scripting, it makes the system extremely flexible," he says. "The solution will support Cardinal's goal of growing our business without growing our overhead."

Cardinal also plans to automate most of the request and processing functions related to its IT/Help Desk group.