BPM-SOX &

Workflow Management Newsletter

Stay connected via the EZ-Workflow Wireless PDA Worklist

Critical approvals are to be done but your approvers are on the move? You have your customer on the phone asking for the status of his/her order but you are away on the shop floor? Not a problem anymore. Simply use your wireless PDA or smart phone device (Blackberry, Treo, HP, etc…) and within a few clicks, you can act in a timely and professional manner. Not only used to notify you of tasks to be done, your EZ-Workflow Online PDA Worklist will enable you also to:

• View all tasks currently on your online worklist
• Lookup transaction details, status and documented events history
• See what process steps have been completed and those awaiting execution
• Perform electronically signed approval or rejection (with optional notes)
• Execute your tasks or others delegated to you
• Consult your collaboration messages and respond to them
• Monitor color-coded Key Performance Indicators and drill-down to reporting details
• Identify urgent and/or overdue instances to
• Resolve, re-route, forward-to any instances needing attention
• Etc …

More than only a notification channel, your wireless device enables complete workflow execution capabilities. “Shadowing” your full browser User Worklist, you can swap between your PC/laptop worklist and your PDA worklist anytime, or even operating both simultaneously.

Test drive the PDA mode at http://www.ez-process.net/ezflowdemo/pda.htm (even from a full browser). Enter username "peter" with password "xp".

EZ-Workflow assessment by the Technion Israel Institute of Technology

The William Davidson Faculty of Industrial Engineering and Management, in collaboration with the Technion Israel Institute of Technology, recently conducted a technical assessment of DynaFlow’s web-based business workflow solution, EZ-Workflow. Headed by 3 specialists, the evaluation team produced their assessment report last month, after 4 months of technical testing, integration analysis and benchmarking. Find below a summary of their conclusions:

“From our EZ-Workflow analysis, we identified the following advantages:

• Functionality rich (can be compared with high-priced system)
• Fully web-based, no client components required for end-users
• Supporting extended enterprise processes. End-users might be employees from partner organizations, not necessarily the organization itself
• The implementation time of EZ-Workflow is very short. Implementation to live system within 6 weeks
• Pricing very competitive and based on unlimited end-users licensing. No surcharge needed when more users are added to be workflow executors.
• Supporting most of the existing workflow patterns make it flexible and increase its adaptation to various systems”.

SOX – Segregation of Duties (SOD) Scan

Segregation of Duties at the most basic level means that no single individual should have control over two or more phases of a transaction or operation. If a single person can carry out and conceal errors and/or irregularities in the course of performing their day-to-day activities they have generally been assigned or allowed access to incompatible duties or responsibilities. Some examples of incompatible duties are:

• Authorizing a transaction, receiving and maintaining custody of the asset that resulted from the transaction
• Receiving checks (payment on account) and approving write-offs
• Depositing cash and reconciling bank statements
• Approving time cards and having custody of pay checks

The increasing use of IT systems, like SSA/Baan ERP makes it even more difficult. The IT authorizations, granted to employees, need to respect the segregation of duties. Since authorizations are decoupled from employees by the "role", the results in terms of authorizations on employee level are difficult to track. Employees can fulfill multiple roles, and roles can give access to multiple processes. To help manage this complexity, DynaFlow developed the dynamic Segregation of Duties Scan.

The SOD Scan automatically derives the employees/applications authorization structure from process model and/or imported authorization tables. To enable cross-applications SOD conflicts to be identified, the SOD Scan also enables various applications accesses to be imported and merged together. The resulting employee level access structure is then scanned using predefined SOX/SOD conflict rules. Within minutes, thousands of users, roles, business processes and application accesses are scanned and business conflicts are clearly identified. Appropriate business owners are finally notified of these to provide resolution, documentation and/or mitigation.

How is Herman Miller benefiting from the dynamic Segregation of Duties (SOD) Scan:

"Like so many organizations seeking SOX certification or adequate governance, Herman Miller needs to certify that users do not have access to applications that create a conflict of interest. Our challenge, however, is to perform such “Segregation of Duties” (SOD) validation across 1600+ users, 250+ user-roles, 300+ business processes and thousands of application/session accesses associated to various business systems. For our first round, we came up with home made scripts, tables and spreadsheets along with countless hours of manual analysis. Not only was this a tedious task, the results of our analysis were good as long as the Employee-Roles-Process-Applications relationships were not modified. Needless to say, when our SOD validation was completed, it was time to start it over again... We have since then selected the EZ-Compliance rules-driven SOD conflicts identification engine, enabling us to scan dynamically of all the above elements … in less than 10 minutes! Not only we know precisely who is able to access what, we have direct visibility of any SOD conflicts for us to investigate, resolve and mitigate. In addition to saving us considerable effort, the EZ-Compliance solution will enhance the accuracy of our conflicts identification, critical to maintain our SOX certification for years to come".

To read more about Herman Miller SOD project, read the Customer Case Study

To arrange for a Free SOD Trial Scan, simply e-mail DynaFlow.

EZ-Seminar Agenda

If you wish to learn more the above features and how they benefit organizations such as yours, attend an EZ-Seminar. Customer cases driven, these webinars enable you to see EZ-Process in action. In addition, each attendees receives a BPM/Workflow Companion CD.

• Wednesday, November 16th, 2005: Web-based Seminar
  11:00AM (Eastern Americas; GMT-5), 5.00PM (Western Europe; GMT+1)
• Wednesday December 7th, 2005; Web-based Seminar
  11:00AM Eastern Americas; GMT-5), 5.00PM (Western Europe; GMT+1)
• Wednesday, January 18th, 2006: Web-based Seminar
  9:30AM (Western Europe; GMT+1); 4.30PM (Singapore; GMT+8)
• Wednesday, February 7th, 2006: Web-based Seminar
  11:00AM (Eastern Americas; GMT-5), 5.00PM (Western Europe; GMT+1)

For the agenda and registration, go to http://www.dynaflow-dem.com/Documents/EZ-Seminars.htm

New Alliance – Delta Consultants

To address the growing market demand for compliance management projects, DynaFlow is pleased to announce a new alliance with Delta Consultants Inc. Established in 1998, Delta senior consultants have been involved directly in several SOX and compliance certifications projects with various size organizations.

Pierre Beaulieu, President & CIO of DynaFlow, states: “The combination of the extended finance background and hands-on expertise from Delta consultants, coupled with the power of the Segregation of Duties conflicts scanning capabilities of EZ-Compliance, is a perfect recipe for our customers. Having seen Delta staff at work in our early exchanges, and most of all how they proposed suggestions to improve the latest release of EZ-Compliance, is making me feel confident about the added value they bring to the equation”.

"We're excited for the opportunity to work more closely with DynaFlow", adds John Elenbaas, co-owner of Delta Consultants. "The flexibility of their EZ-Process Process/Workflow/Compliance Management software allows us to tailor an approach to meet the specific needs of every client.  It's an awesome value for our customers...powerful documentation, compliance and workflow tools combined with the business expertise to implement a great solution."

For more information about Delta Consultants, visit www.deltasoxsolutions.com

DynaFlow Customer Survey – Results

DynaFlow recently conducted a Customer satisfaction survey across DynaFlow customers. Customers were asked to judge and rate DynaFlow performance in several areas both product as well as service related. Some key results are listed below:

In what areas do you believe that EZ-Workflow automation could generate savings and benefits?

• Human Resources (Hire, Employee review, Resource/Vacation requests, Time Sheets, etc…)
• Employee Support (Help Desk, Training, etc…)
• IT (Help Desk Mgmt, Customization requests, etc…)
• Engineering (ECO/ECN tracking, Item Master Mgmt, etc…)
• Purchase Requisition Approvals (all)
• Fixed Assets Disposals
• Order Processing
• Fields Service
• Various approvals

Which benefits have you achieved by implementing these EZ-Process modules?

• Better customer service
• Lower operating costs
• Increased business efficiency
• Increased business adaptability & flexibility
• Increased corporate-wide Knowledge Management
• Increased transactions tracking/monitoring
• Reduce transactions cycle time
• Increased global process consistency & quality
• Better governance and compliance

We’ve learned what we’re good at. It’s good to see DynaFlow’s relentless effort to serve our customers with world-class products and support are appreciated by our customers. The survey has confirmed our customer focused development and responsive services, which we’ll continue to respectively develop and supply.

title