Business Process Apps for Finance and Purchasing for Dummies

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BusinessProcess
AppsforFinance
andPurchasing
01_9781119288497-ffirs.indd i April 19, 2016 4:11 AM
by Lawrence Miller, CISSP
K2® Special Edition

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Business Process Apps for Finance and Purchasing For Dummies®
, K2®
Special Edition
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Table of Contents
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
About This Book......................................................................... 2
Foolish Assumptions.................................................................. 2
Icons Used in This Book............................................................. 3
Beyond the Book......................................................................... 3
Where to Go from Here.............................................................. 3
Chapter 1: Recognizing How Workflows and Forms
Drive Efficiency. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Understanding the Cost of Business Process
Inefficiency............................................................................... 5
Automating Workflows to Increase Efficiency........................ 7
Chapter 2: Finance Process Improvements
That Save Time and Money. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Building Better Budgets........................................................... 14
Managing Expense Claims....................................................... 14
Facilitating Audits..................................................................... 15
Ensuring Compliance................................................................ 16
Processing Invoices.................................................................. 18
Chapter 3: Purchasing Process Improvements for
Every Company . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Managing RFQs.......................................................................... 21
Authorizing Expenditures........................................................ 22
Managing Contracts.................................................................. 24
Managing Vendor Performance and Service‐Level
Agreements............................................................................ 25
Chapter 4: DIY Process‐Based Workflows. . . . . . . . . . . 27
Is Your IT Development Backlog Holding You Back?........... 27
Overhauling Your Workflows for the Mobile Age................. 28
Demand meets modernization...................................... 29
Empowering mobile users............................................. 31
Automating workflows to increase efficiency............. 31
Building Business Apps that Transform Finance
and Purchasing...................................................................... 32
Future Proofing with Scalable Apps You Can
Build Yourself........................................................................ 34

iv
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Chapter 5: Building the Business Case for Process
Transformation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Focusing on Revenue Growth Opportunities........................ 37
Improving Planning with Better Financial Insights............... 38
Aligning Processes Throughout Your Organization for
Operational Excellence........................................................ 39
Chapter 6: Ten Keys for Transforming
Business Processes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Empower Users with Easy, Do‐It‐Yourself Tools.................. 41
Automate Manual, Error‐Prone Processes............................ 41
Go Beyond Process Automation with Process
Improvement......................................................................... 42
Integrate Seamlessly with Existing Systems and
Reusable Components.......................................................... 42
Deliver Information at the Point of Need............................... 43
Enable Advanced Analytics and Reporting........................... 43
Drive Change with Flexibility and Agility............................... 43
Balance Power and Simplicity................................................. 43
Provide Secure Mobile Access to Forms,
Workflows, and Data............................................................. 44
Measure and Report Your Results.......................................... 44
Business Process Apps for Finance and Purchasing For Dummies, K2 Special Edition

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Introduction
To be successful today, businesses must adapt faster to
increasing competition and do even more with less — less
time and fewer resources. Core finance and purchasing pro-
cesses are a key area in which business processes can often
be easily automated to facilitate greater operational efficien-
cies and better decision making throughout the organization.
In a world in which speed matters, businesses need agility
and flexibility to quickly modify their processes and business
practices in order to stay competitive. Traditionally, large
companies have hampered process agility by locking them-
selves into monolithic systems, processes, and workflows.
Different business process management (BPM) suites have
unique strengths and weaknesses. However, a common weak-
ness among many BPM solutions is the lack of agility. Highly
skilled developers and months (or even years) of coding are
typically required to build and customize business applica-
tions. By the time an application is delivered, the business
process may have changed, requiring further tweaking of the
application and many more months of development time. As a
result, businesses are stuck with outdated and inflexible appli-
cations and processes.
The rapid pace of modernization and evolving customer
expectations are increasingly driving organizations toward
business process transformation in the quest to achieve pro-
cess excellence. Low‐code business process apps solutions
enable companies to rapidly build and deploy applications
that are customized to meet their unique business needs.
Unlike traditional BPM options, the opportunities to transform
quickly and immediately realize the benefits are greater with
low‐code business process apps solutions.
Choosing the right solution for business process transforma-
tion will provide easy access to information and quantifiable
results, and choosing a solution that is agile, scalable, and
powerful will give your business the tools it needs to stay
ahead in a highly competitive market.

About This Book
This book explains how automated business workflows and
forms help drive efficiency (Chapter 1); explores different
finance and purchasing use cases (Chapters 2 and 3, respec-
tively); describes how to build automated, process‐based
workflows without being a developer (Chapter 4); examines
how businesses can use a single workflow solution across the
entire organization (Chapter 5); and provides key criteria to
help you evaluate business process apps solutions for your
organization (Chapter 6).
Foolish Assumptions
It has been said that most assumptions have outlived their
uselessness, but I assume a few things nonetheless.
Mainly, I assume that you’re a finance or purchasing manager,
working for a small or medium business, or perhaps a large
enterprise. Therefore, I wrote this book primarily for nontech-
nical readers. But please don’t be discouraged from reading
this book if you happen to be technical — you can still gain
a better understanding of the challenges and opportunities
that other departments in your company are focused on, and
how to improve support for your peers in other departments
throughout the company.
I also assume that you’re looking for a solution to help you
automate critical business forms and workflow processes in
your organization to radically improve your core finance and
purchasing processes, and you don’t particularly want to
become a software developer. You need a solution that’s as
easy as drag‐and‐drop so that you can get up and running as
quickly as possible, without adding to the workload of your
heavily backlogged IT application development teams.
If these assumptions describe you, this book is for you!
Business Process Apps for Finance and Purchasing For Dummies, K2 Special Edition 2

Icons Used in This Book
Throughout this book, I occasionally use special icons to call
attention to important information. Here’s what to expect:
This icon points out information that you should commit to
your nonvolatile memory, your gray matter, or your noggin —
along with anniversaries and birthdays.
You won’t find a map of the human genome here, but if you
seek to attain the seventh level of NERD‐vana, perk up! This
icon explains the jargon beneath the jargon.
Thank you for reading; hope you enjoy the book; please take
care of your writers! Seriously, this icon points out helpful
suggestions and useful nuggets of information.
This icon points out the stuff your mother warned you about.
Okay, probably not. But you should take heed nonetheless —
you might just save yourself some time and frustration.
Beyond the Book
I can cover only so much in 48 short pages, so if you find your-
self at the end of this book thinking “Gosh, this was an amaz-
ing book, where can I learn more?” just go to www.k2.com.
Where to Go from Here
With my apologies to Lewis Carroll, Alice, and the Cheshire cat:
“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from
here?”
“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said
the Cat — er, the Dummies Man.
“I don’t much care where . . . ” said Alice.
“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go!”
Introduction 3

That’s certainly true of Business Process Apps for Finance and
Purchasing For Dummies, which, like Alice in Wonderland, is
also destined to become a timeless classic.
If you don’t know where you’re going, any chapter will get
you there — but Chapter 1 might be a good place to start.
However, if you see a particular topic that piques your inter-
est, feel free to jump ahead to that chapter. Each chapter is
individually wrapped (but not packaged for individual sale)
and written to stand on its own, so feel free to start reading
anywhere and skip around to your heart’s content. Read this
book in any order that suits you (though I don’t recommend
upside down or backwards).
I promise you won’t get lost falling down the rabbit hole!

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RecognizingHow
WorkflowsandFormsDrive
Efficiency
In This Chapter
▶▶ Eliminating bottlenecks and costly errors in core business processes
▶▶ Moving beyond manual, paper‐based workflows and forms
In this chapter, you explore the benefits of automating your
process‐based workflows and forms. You also learn how a
business process apps solution can help you quickly achieve
business agility through process automation and excellence.
Understanding the Cost of
Business Process Inefficiency
Process bottlenecks and costly errors often result from ineffi-
cient and manual workflows and paper‐based forms. Real‐time
access to the right information at the point of need is criti-
cal for maintaining accuracy and efficiency in transactional
processes. For example, without up‐to‐date account informa-
tion, a customer’s purchase order may be delayed while your
accounts receivable team verifies that the customer’s account
is current and has sufficient credit available for the purchase.
Manual, paper‐based processes or complex and inflexible
business applications inevitably slow many finance and
purchasing processes to an unacceptable pace in today’s
Chapter 1

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modern, connected, and highly competitive business environ-
ment. For example, a paper‐based invoice approval process
might require a line‐of‐business (LOB) manager to be in the
office to review an invoice and match it to a budget authoriza-
tion (conveniently saved as a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet on
the manager’s network home drive) and a paper‐based pur-
chase order. Next, the manager needs to code the invoice to a
general ledger account. (The most commonly used accounts
for the department are, of course, listed on a sticky note
taped to the manager’s monitor.)
Frustrated by inefficient workflows and processes, employees
are increasingly using their own devices and downloading
their own applications (“apps”) to get work done. The modern
worker is tech savvy and finds ways to work around infra-
structure limitations and rigid, outdated processes.
According to Gartner (www.gartner.com), a digital work-
place leverages the technical literacy of cross‐generation
employees — Millennials, Gen Xers, and even Baby
Boomers — to
✓✓ Enable new and more effective ways of working
✓✓ Improve employee engagement and agility
✓✓ Exploit consumer‐oriented styles and technologies
International Data Group (IDG, www.idg.com) reports
that businesses expect the consumerization of IT in the
enterprise to improve user satisfaction and productivity,
process efficiency, collaboration, and business agility. In fact,
data shows that businesses are eager to keep employees
productive wherever they go and whenever they work:
✓✓ According to Manufacturing Business Technology,
55 percent of manufacturing professionals expect to
increase their use of mobile technologies (www.mbtmag.
com/news/2016/02/survey‐majority‐manu
facturers‐plan‐bolster‐mobile‐app‐use).
✓✓ According to Workflow Magazine, 74 percent of busi-
nesses that deploy mobile devices are motivated by a
need to accelerate communication, and 63 percent of
businesses deploy mobile devices to let employees work
away from their desks (“IT Managers’ Views on Mobile
Tech and Workflow,” September 2014).

Chapter 1: Recognizing How Workflows and Forms Drive Efficiency 7
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Modern business apps must do more than simply enable
employees to read and reply to emails from their mobile
devices. They must be able to seamlessly complete routine
tasks whether in the office or in the field — for everything
from processing invoices and issuing purchase orders to
complex process management and sophisticated financial
analysis.
Automating Workflows to
Increase Efficiency
Almost every part of a successful business relies on having
the right information available to the right person at the right
time. Nevertheless, information flow is often hindered by
✓✓ Manual, paper‐based business processes that are out-
dated, inefficient, and inflexible
✓✓ Disparate LOB systems — such as customer relationship
management (CRM) and enterprise resource planning
(ERP) — which store critical information in isolated silos
and are difficult to customize, integrate, and use (and
you can forget about mobile access!)
A business can only go as far and as fast as the information
that powers it.
Consider the example of the customer purchase order
delayed by manual verification processes, described earlier
in this chapter. A more efficient, automated process might
instead pull information from your ERP system in real time as
a sales order is being created. This process can verify that an
account is current and has sufficient credit available, allow-
ing the sales order to be immediately created or the request
automatically routed to the appropriate parties to resolve any
discrepancies.
Manual, paper‐based processes and monolithic business
systems simply can’t keep pace with the modern digital work-
place and economy. Already, employees and consumers are
looking elsewhere. For example, IDG reports that 79 percent
of employees use cloud‐based file sharing and collaboration
tools, such as Box, Dropbox, and OneDrive, for work‐related

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purposes. Similarly, Internet Retailer (www.internet
retailer.com) estimated that total e‐commerce sales in
2015 exceeded $350 billion — with mobile commerce account-
ing for 30 percent of that total. Consumers are increasingly
doing more of their business online.
Organizations clearly understand the benefits of automating
key business processes. According to a study by Cognizant’s
Center for the Future of Work:
✓✓ Businesses are automating 25 to 40 percent of their
workflows.
✓✓ Businesses that automate processes are reducing costs
by 15 percent year over year.
✓✓ Half the businesses surveyed anticipated that automa-
tion would significantly improve their business processes
within three to five years.
Wait a second! Three to five years to see the return on invest-
ment (ROI) for automation? That’s way too long in today’s
competitive business environment. Unfortunately, many
businesses are frequently frustrated by the large capital
investments and long payback periods associated with the
development of custom workflows and forms to support auto-
mation. Those costs can be especially discouraging for busi-
nesses that want to extend workflows to their mobile users.
Automated workflows and forms can transform a business
into a more productive, responsive environment, but those
business apps need to accommodate rapidly changing busi-
ness and customer needs, a mobile workforce, and disparate
LOB systems. In a recent survey, industry analyst IDC (www.
idc.com) found that large organizations that automated their
manual, error‐prone processes experienced an average ROI of
537 percent.
Modern business apps that support critical workflows and
forms must be
✓✓ Automated
✓✓ Scalable
✓✓ Flexible
✓✓ Fast to implement

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Paper‐based workflows are typically fast and easy to imple-
ment but do not scale well and are, by their nature, manual
(see Figure 1‐1).
Many businesses buy or build “one‐off” custom apps for
specific business workflows. Although such solutions can be
highly automated, they are not easily modified, do not scale
well, can take months or even years to implement, and can be
prohibitively expensive to develop and maintain.
Figure 1-1: Business‐workflow traits.

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A business process apps solution provides automation,
scalability, flexibility, and agility to support, optimize, and
transform critical business processes. Such a solution can be
implemented quickly and easily — without specialized appli-
cation development skills to help your organization realize a
significant ROI from your automation initiatives more quickly.
Dalkia automates PO process
to improve efficiency and
customer service
Dalkia, a division of the Veolia
Environment Group, is a leading pro-
vider of energy services in Europe.
In Slovakia, the company supplies
heating systems and energy for com-
mercial and domestic properties.
Dalkia issues 10,000 to 12,000 pur-
chase orders (POs) every year, for
everything from company vehicles
to tiny valves for heating units.
However, the company’s manual
processes for creating, authorizing,
and managing POs were inefficient
and created several challenges.
First, the process took too long.
Employees had to print a form, manu-
ally fill in details of what they wanted
to purchase, and physically take the
document to the appropriate man-
agers for approval. Between two
and five different signatures were
required on each PO form, depend-
ing on the value of the item to be
purchased.
After a form had all the necessary
signatures, someone had to retype
it into the company’s Microsoft
Dynamics enterprise resource plan-
ning (ERP) system. As a result, POs
frequently took a week or longer to
be created, approved, and issued.
The second challenge was more
troublesome. With the existing pro-
cess, engineers could unknowingly
create POs for parts that had been
discontinued, or get a digit wrong in
a part number, causing the incorrect
part to be delivered. If the component
was required for a specific repair or
installation project at a commercial
or domestic property, these errors
caused costly delays and poor cus-
tomer service.
Solution
Working with K2, K2 partner
GRADIENT Slovakia (w w w .
gradientecm.com), and other
third‐party suppliers, Dalkia Group in
Slovakia designed and implemented
a number of automated K2 work-
flows. Chief among these applica-
tions was a new PO management
process, which was tightly inte-
grated with Microsoft’s SharePoint,
Dynamics ERP, and Active Directory
systems.

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The first and most evident ben-
efit that Dalkia experienced was
dramatic process acceleration.
Employees now enter their purchase
requirements into an electronic
form, which is then automatically
routed to the correct managers for
digital authorization. No one needs
to reenter information because all
data in approved PO forms passes
directly into the company’s central
ERP system.
“It used to take around a week for
POs to be raised [issued],” said Filip
Legény, IT project manager at Dalkia
in Slovakia. “If everyone is at his or
her desk, the approval of a PO can
now be achieved in as little as 10
minutes.”
The most significant benefit of the K2
workflow is the improvement in cus-
tomer service. When engineers fill in
PO request forms electronically, they
are given a drop‐down box showing
approved components and products,
and the correct part numbers are
automatically applied. Therefore,
items can be sourced more accu-
rately, enabling customer projects to
go ahead on schedule.
In addition, the company expects
to save money from the use of K2
processes. The K2 solution provides
purchasing managers with a clear
overview of all POs issued. They can
easily see which products or parts
are requested most frequently and
then negotiate bulk purchasing deals
with suppliers. In this way, Dalkia
can optimize its stock and operate
more cost efficiently.
Previously, when engineers cre-
ated POs for equipment, they didn’t
always know exactly which parts
Dalkia already had in its in‐house
stockrooms. So they could waste
time and money creating a PO for a
specific heat pump when a similar
heat pump (perhaps from a different
supplier with a different part number)
might already be available on the
shelf. K2 gives engineers stock vis-
ibility and encourages them to use
parts already available, rather than
make one‐off purchases at a higher
unit cost.
“Now, it is much easier for engineers
to see what items are in stock. That
saves us money and enables us to
deliver better services to our cus-
tomers,” Legény said. “Definitely,
our engineers can arrive at our cus-
tomer sites with the right parts more
quickly.”
Following the successful application
of K2 in this area, Dalkia is now con-
sidering rolling out similar K2‐driven
processes.
“Other businesses have similar
problems to us; K2 could meet their
needs, too,” Legény said.

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05_9781119288497-ch02.indd 13 April 19, 2016 4:11 AM
FinanceProcess
ImprovementsThatSave
TimeandMoney
In This Chapter
▶▶ Giving budget owners the complete picture
▶▶ Processing expense claims more efficiently
▶▶ Working with auditors and regulators
▶▶ Automating the invoicing process
Within the finance department, organizations face more
pressure than ever to identify gaps in their financial
framework to better manage budgets and costs. Enterprise
accounting and finance systems help, but they are built to
handle large‐scale processes and are not flexible enough to
handle exceptions or the more granular processes without
customization. Leveraging the data in enterprise accounting
and finance systems for performance tracking and analysis
can also be difficult and cumbersome.
In this chapter, you explore how a business process apps
solution can help you maintain better control of your financial
operations by incorporating your line‐of‐business (LOB) data
into customized applications composed of forms, workflows,
and reports that can be built without code and span your
cloud and on‐premises systems.
Chapter 2

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Building Better Budgets
Accurate budgeting is vital to the success of any organiza-
tion, but analyzing information across disparate systems for
informed decision making can be difficult.
A business process apps solution can incorporate informa-
tion scattered across your LOB systems into a single view to
provide budget owners with a complete picture of the infor-
mation they need to make well‐informed estimates and recom-
mendations.
Managing Expense Claims
Ensuring that expense claims are in compliance with company
policies and authorized by the right people can be challenging
without the right software to help.
A business process apps solution makes this important
function simple through automated workflows and reports
that allow you to track, collaborate, and evaluate trends on
expense claims for faster processing and better projections.
Nando’s serves up success with new K2
business applications
Nando’s operates 286 restaurants
across the U.K., from Aberdeen,
Scotland, to Southampton, England.
The first Nando’s restaurant was
established in the U.K. in 1992. Since
then,thecompanyhasenjoyedexcep-
tional success, opening many new
restaurants every year. Its sustained
business growth was, however, start-
ing to place a strain on the company’s
existing manual processes.
Nando’s finance department handles
4,000 to 6,000 invoices every month in
the U.K. Before they could be paid, all
these invoices had to be allocated to
specific cost centers and authorized
by different people within the busi-
ness, including individual restaurant
managers based at locations across
the country.
“We recognized that this core busi-
ness process could be improved
through the use of an automated
workflow,” said Juan Louw, applica-
tions manager at Nando’s.
The company’s expense process
was similarly in need of automation.

Chapter 2: Finance Process Improvements That Save Time and Money 15
05_9781119288497-ch02.indd 15 April 19, 2016 4:11 AM
Facilitating Audits
Audits are the bane of every finance organization’s existence,
and manual, paper‐based processes exacerbate the experi-
ence. Digging through file rooms and bankers’ boxes to find
the information that your auditors need is time consuming
and frustrating. It can also negatively impact your auditors’
overall impression of your finance organization and ultimately
affect your audit assessment. And, of course, the time your
auditors spend onsite waiting for your accounting team to
find and produce needed documentation is billable!
Employees had to print an expense
form, fill it in, get it authorized by their
manager, and post it to the finance
department. The finance team then
had to retype the information into the
system. The entire process was very
slow, and errors often occurred in
expense forms that took a long time
to manually correct.
Solution
Nando’s used K2 to develop 12 sepa-
rate workflows, which predominantly
support the company’s invoice and
expense‐management processes.
Today, when invoices are received,
the finance team enters them into the
central finance system and allocates
them to the relevant cost centers.
Each invoice is then automatically
directed to the people who need
to authorize it, and managers can
either reject or approve it. Invoices
for maintenance activities at restau-
rants are forwarded to the restaurant
manager so that the manager can
verify that work has been completed
satisfactorily.
The invoicing process is, therefore,
not only faster but also more meticu-
lously administered to improve finan-
cial control.
“We don’t make payments for work
that is incomplete,” Louw said.
With the new K2 expense applica-
tions, employees fill in claims forms
electronically. These forms are then
automatically sent to the appropri-
ate line managers for authorization
before being passed directly to the
finance team.
The automated process saves a
great deal of time in the finance
department because information
doesn’t have to be typed into the sys-
tem, and fewer human errors occur.
“We used to wait three to four weeks
for expense claims to be settled,”
Louw said. “Now we receive pay-
ments weekly.
“As the company continues to grow,
we will be able to process a larger
number of invoices and expense
claims each month.”

05_9781119288497-ch02.indd 16 April 19, 2016 4:11 AM
A business process apps solution can provide complete
visibility into business processes and deliver reporting
capabilities that create a full audit trail and allow you to
archive data even after a workflow has been deleted. Having
important financial information readily available in a central
electronic repository helps your accounting team to prepare
for and support audits much more easily — and your auditors
to complete their assessment less expensively.
Ensuring Compliance
According to a report in 2015 by CFO magazine (http://
ww2.cfo.com/auditing/2015/05/sox‐compliance‐
getting‐costly/), 67 percent of respondents in a Protiviti
survey reported an increase in hours dedicated to Sarbanes‐
Oxley (SOX) compliance, and 58 percent of large companies
in the survey spent more than $1 million on SOX compliance
over that year.
TransLink overhauls enterprise capital
processes, ensuring governance,
speed, and visibility
The South Coast British Columbia
Transportation Authority (TransLink)
is Metro Vancouver’s regional
transportation authority, providing
service to 21 municipalities situated
on 2,000 square kilometers of British
Columbia’s southwestern mainland.
TransLink manages a capital pro-
gram exceeding $250 million per
year. More than 250 capital request-
ers, reviewers, and approvers —
including project implementation
groups and operating subsidiaries —
comprise a capital portfolio of
approximately 125 concurrent capital
projects under challenging financial
constraints. Staff at all levels of the
company — from administrative
support personnel to executive and
board members — collaborate on
all aspects of the capital project life
cycle. Almost 100 new capital proj-
ects or change proposals are sub-
mitted annually for consideration and
approval. TransLink also has approxi-
mately 2,000 purchase order requisi-
tions and 25,000 invoice submissions
that need to be processed every year.
Manual processes and reliance on
paper documentation were leading
to delays, lack of visibility, and an
increased risk for lost information.
TransLink wanted to ensure that
pieces of work didn’t fall behind and

05_9781119288497-ch02.indd 17 April 19, 2016 4:11 AM
that bottlenecks were being identi-
fied and addressed.
TransLink’s objective was to
increase efficiency across its large
enterprise, raising both the transpar-
ency of the process and the account-
ability of everyone who takes part
in it. But with no consistent docu-
ment version control and no central
repository for completed documents,
collaboration across the enterprise
in a virtual team environment was
extremely challenging for project
managers and sponsors. Significant
manual effort was spent reentering
various data points across multiple
disparate systems, which led to data
entry errors, lack of automatic vali-
dation, and long cycle times.
Solution
Dynamic Management Solutions, a
trusted K2 Partner in Vancouver, col-
laborated with TransLink throughout
the initiative and designed, built, and
deployed 11 K2 applications that
automated the entire capital project
life cycle — from project initiation to
closure.
Cathy McLay, CFO and executive
vice president, TransLink Finance
and Corporate Services, sponsored
the project, in which the following K2
applications were deployed:
✓✓ Capital development: Capital
approval in principal submis-
sions, capital approval in prin-
cipal authorizations, specific
project approvals, project
change authorizations
✓✓ Capital asset cost control: Asset
capitalizations, capital project
closeout
✓✓ Purchase order requisitioning
✓✓ Supplier management: Supplier
performance reviews, correc-
tive action request management
✓✓ Invoice submission
✓✓ Progress draw payments
These applications not only reduced
the overall cycle time per process
but also created a collaboration por-
tal and document repository by tak-
ing advantage of TransLink’s existing
SharePoint platform.
The solutions integrate with
TransLink’s LOB systems, provide
extensive capabilities to report on
process bottlenecks, allow users to
quickly and efficiently view the sta-
tus of a particular submission, and
support collaboration through easy‐
to‐use e‐forms.
Through new administrative con-
sistencies, centralization, improved
reporting, and process integration,
TransLink expects to save more than
$330K in the first year and every year
after.
The ongoing financial and collabora-
tion benefits of the Enterprise Capital
Process Workflow System are
expected to be significantly larger
than the initial one‐time and ongoing
costs. The custom solution stream-
lines TransLink’s processes, brings
together all operating entities, and
unifies hundreds of people.

05_9781119288497-ch02.indd 18 April 19, 2016 4:11 AM
A business process apps solution can help you stay in compli-
ance with SOX requirements by making sure that processes
and business‐critical decisions are sent to the right people,
at the right time. You can automate the SOX compliance life
cycle with forms and workflows that reduce compliance costs
and simplify SOX requirements by centralizing compliance
data, capturing full audit trails, and automating and speeding
up approval cycles. To that end, the Protiviti survey found
that 58 percent of large companies surveyed had significant
plans to automate more of their IT processes and controls.
Processing Invoices
Paper invoicing is inefficient and error prone. In addition to
their mail handling and data‐entry activities and costs, paper
invoices must be manually cross‐referenced and compared to
a purchase order or contract to verify accuracy. Invoices may
also require multiple levels of approval, and sending a paper
invoice manually from desk to desk via interoffice mail can
take weeks, further delaying payment of the invoice. Delays
such as these can be costly in terms of late fees and vendor
relationships.
A business process apps solution can automate, simplify, and
accelerate your invoicing process through automated work-
flows and approval processes. The solution can reference and
scan paper invoices can be on receipt, and then attach them
to electronic forms that route invoices to the right people for
authorization and systems so that each invoice is correctly
classified, validated, and safely stored in the system of record.
After the right people approve the invoices, the information
is then sent to a financial system for payment. An automated
system such as this can reduce invoice processing time from
weeks to days or even hours.
Business process automation with K2
solutions is solid gold for Kinross
Kinross Gold Corporation is the third‐
largest gold producer in Canada.
With mining operations spanning the
globe, Kinross manages more than
$1 billion in capital requests each
year. Previously, these requests
were managed entirely by a manual
process, which resulted in delays,

05_9781119288497-ch02.indd 19 April 19, 2016 4:11 AM
duplication, chasing after signatures,
and much frustration.
The first attempt by Kinross to auto-
mate the capital request process
consisted of a hard‐coded custom
.NET solution. Although this solution
improved traceability, it provided lit-
tle flexibility, was entirely sequential,
and offered none of the critical busi-
ness process management (BPM)
functionality that Kinross needed.
Describing the custom .NET solution,
ChrisFraidakis,Kinrossprogramman-
ager, explains that it “was extremely
difficult to manage and support,
costing thousands to develop basic
functionality or to implement simple
changes. What’s more, it was very
frustrating for the users who could
not perform simple things like view-
ing their tasks or approving things
while on the go. The thought of try-
ing to automate any other processes
seemed very daunting.”
Solution
With a strong intranet program
based on Microsoft SharePoint tak-
ing shape, Kinross looked to several
ecosystem providers to help fill the
need for a robust BPM solution.
“In the end, K2 was the most feature‐
rich and cost‐effective solution, and
they had the strongest implementa-
tion partners,” Fraidakis said.
Working with K2 partner Caprivi
Solutions, Kinross has developed
many business applications without
the time and cost associated with
custom code.
“Starting with the capital expen-
diture process, we transformed a
15‐step sequential approval to a
three‐tier parallel process that han-
dles every step, from the mines to the
board of directors,” said Fabio Casti,
Principal, Caprivi Solutions. “With
our agile methodology, we’ve also
allowed Kinross to go beyond the
basics to include post‐investment
reviews, integration with enterprise
resource planning (ERP) and busi-
ness intelligence (BI) solutions, and
health and safety checklists.”
“Users love the ability to complete
their tasks on the go from any mobile
device,” Casti said. “This is a key
feature for a company that travels
extensively and another process we
have since helped to automate.”
With this success, Kinross has since
automated more than a dozen pro-
cesses, with many more planned.
“It has gone viral,” Fraidakis said.
“With every new application we
release, we get more requests from
other mines and departments asking
if we could do the same for them.”

05_9781119288497-ch02.indd 20 April 19, 2016 4:11 AM

06_9781119288497-ch03.indd 21 April 19, 2016 4:11 AM
PurchasingProcess
Improvementsfor
EveryCompany
In This Chapter
▶▶ Using automated templates to create RFQs
▶▶ Issuing purchase orders
▶▶ Managing contract development, renewals, and cancellations
▶▶ Ensuring vendor performance and SLA compliance
Managing purchasing processes, contracts, and vendor
performance are important purchasing department
functions that often lack efficient, automated processes and
workflows.
In this chapter, you explore purchasing process‐based work-
flows and forms that can be automated with a business
process apps solution.
Managing RFQs
A request for quotation (RFQ) is often used to invite poten-
tial vendors or suppliers to submit a bid or sales quote for
a specific product or service required by an organization.
When RFQ responses are received from competing vendors,
a paper‐based or email copy of each vendor’s response may
be routed throughout your organization for review. After a
Chapter 3

06_9781119288497-ch03.indd 22 April 19, 2016 4:11 AM
winning quote is selected, the different vendors are notified of
the outcome, often via email.
A business process automation solution can help you
manage your RFQ selection workflow by routing vendors’
RFQ responses to the appropriate parties within your orga-
nization for review and comment. After you select a vendor,
you can use the solution to notify each vendor of the outcome.
Authorizing Expenditures
The purchasing process in any organization can be a time‐
consuming process that introduces many opportunities for
inefficiencies, errors, risk, and mismanagement. Delays can
be costly in terms of missed promotional opportunities or
discounts, or in terms of higher prices because of “expe-
dited” purchase requests that languished through a lengthy
approval process. Errors on paper‐based purchase order
forms may not be detected until a product is received, requir-
ing rework and additional processing, causing further delays,
and potentially incurring additional costs such as return
freight and restocking fees. Also, unauthorized spending can
cost businesses thousands of dollars each year.
RGE achieves greater efficiency and
faster approval times with K2
Royal Golden Eagle (RGE) manages
a group of world‐class companies
specializing in resource‐based
manufacturing and is supported
by a workforce of more than 50,000
people. The assets held by RGE com-
panies today exceed US $15 billion.
RGE’s corporate offices faced
challenges related to administra-
tive efficiency, relying heavily on
the use of physical copies of forms
and signatures. Approvals of vari-
ous corporate forms from legal,
IT, and finance and accounting
departments, as well as the corpo-
rate investment proposal form (or
“CAPEX” form), took around three to
five months because key approving
officers who travel frequently were
unable to immediately access and
sign these forms.
CAPEX approvals are essential
for any project to commence (for
example, equipment repair and ten-
der submission), so these delays had
negative, business‐wide impacts.

Chapter 3: Purchasing Process Improvements for Every Company 23
06_9781119288497-ch03.indd 23 April 19, 2016 4:11 AM
A business process apps solution can eliminate unauthorized
spending through automated workflows that control capital
budgets and expenditures and that provide full visibility into
processes. A flexible rules framework lets you define rules,
such as how much one individual can approve before addi-
tional authorization is required.
Solution
RGE recognized that workflow effi-
ciency is key to overall business opti-
mization and employee satisfaction.
After evaluating a few options, K2
was chosen as the best fit because
of its strong workflow engine and
the fact that no additional coding
was required. This would enhance
RGE’s overall IT productivity because
technical staff with no programming
background could build extensive
workflows.
Averis, RGE’s IT organization,
replaced the manual CAPEX form
with an online approval system
built using K2 SmartForms, effec-
tively digitizing the entire process.
Development for the pilot phase
began in December 2014 at Asia
Pacific Resources International
Holdings Ltd (APRIL), RGE’s pulp and
paper manufacturer in Indonesia.
Within six months, it went live for 300
APRIL employees.
The creation of forms through K2
required a team of users who could
logically operationalize existing pro-
cesses using the software’s features.
It allowed this team to focus more on
higher‐levelandlonger‐termbusiness
needs, which included understanding
user requirements, Smart Objects, the
database layer, and the overall work-
flow of triggering forms.
After using K2 to design and imple-
ment the forms and workflows, RGE
experienced a significant improve-
ment in the turnaround time for
approvals.
The online CAPEX system allows
email approvals via computers and
mobile devices, making it more con-
venient for executives to approve
forms on the go. With no more
paperwork, administrative tracking,
or delays to CAPEX approval, work
on projects can start quickly. This
is recognized by RGE to increase
competitive advantage and business
agility while preventing potential
business losses.
Staff collaboration has improved as
well. The online CAPEX form has a
“consult” feature through which
an employee can request guid-
ance from colleagues outside the
approval chain. With all the informa-
tion being captured in the form at
every stage, there is full transpar-
ency and traceability throughout the
organization.

06_9781119288497-ch03.indd 24 April 19, 2016 4:11 AM
Managing Contracts
Contract management is an important purchasing/procurement
function. A business process apps solution can help ensure
that contracts are reviewed in a timely manner, through auto-
mated alerts and approvals that notify the appropriate parties
when a contract is up for renewal or needs to be cancelled and
then keep the contract moving until the renewal or cancellation
process is complete.
A contract that is simply updated and modified slightly for dif-
ferent customers or clients can lead to costly errors and omis-
sions. Also, it can potentially cause legal issues resulting from
privacy or nondisclosure violations.
A business process apps solution can help you manage your
contracts with templates that prompt users to complete
custom fields in the contract document. You can also manage
different document versions, facilitate and automate review
cycles and approval processes, and make sure that each con-
tract is automatically routed to the right person with the right
information and at the right time. Often, this is where contract
management falls apart. The contract management process
ends with one of the parties having to print dozens of pages
for manual signing. Integrating your contract management
process with a digital signature provider, such as DocuSign,
helps to ensure an efficient contract management process
from beginning to end.
Mobinil accelerates internal processes
by up to 90 percent with K2
Mobinil is the leading mobile ser-
vices operator in Egypt. With more
than 30 million customers, it offers
mobile signal coverage for more
than 99 percent of the Egyptian
population.
Mobinil relied on a number of tradi-
tional paper‐based processes and
suffered from all the usual chal-
lenges that this creates.
“We experienced unnecessary
delays, inconsistencies, lost approv-
als, and a lack of governance,”
explained Amir Salah, head of busi-
ness solutions at Mobinil. “With
our more complex processes, the

Chapter 3: Purchasing Process Improvements for Every Company 25
06_9781119288497-ch03.indd 25 April 19, 2016 4:11 AM
Managing Vendor Performance
and Service‐Level Agreements
Ensuring that your approved vendors perform as required is
an important purchasing function. A business process apps
solution that integrates with line‐of‐business (LOB) systems
and enterprise business applications helps ensure that pur-
chasing managers have access to real‐time data in order to
better manage vendor performance. Examples of this data
might include order history, pricing and discount levels, on‐
time delivery performance, and issue tracking and resolution,
among others.
In addition, service‐level agreements (SLAs) need to be regu-
larly reviewed for SLA violations and enforced when the
need arises. Many service vendors post SLA updates on their
websites and don’t always announce important changes.
challenges were even worse. So, we
had to adopt a new strategy for busi-
ness process management.”
Solution
Mobinil selected K2 blackpearl
because it met the company’s three
primary requirements. Recalling the
company’s thorough evaluation of
several potential solutions, Salah
said: “First, K2 blackpearl was a
well‐known, proven technology; sec-
ond, K2 came out on top for value for
money; and finally, K2 could provide
local support, which was very impor-
tant for us.”
The company used K2 blackpearl to
automate and simplify the creation
and amendment of contracts. Many
different contracts are in use across
the business, and K2 ensures that
employees select the correct version
every time and then submit it to the
right people for authorization.
Mobinil’s employees used to spend
two to three months finalizing new
or amended contracts; now, the
majority are completed in just 15 to
30 days. “The improvement in our
contracts process is awesome,”
commented Salah. “The gains in pro-
ductivity were immediately observed
by the company’s senior managers in
almost all departments.”
Through its use of K2, Mobinil has
also been able to improve the gov-
ernance and management of its
processes. Managers can see what
stage contracts are at, at any time,
without having to make lots of phone
calls to different departments. And
now an electronic record exists of
all approvals.

06_9781119288497-ch03.indd 26 April 19, 2016 4:11 AM
A business process apps solution can help you ensure that
you always have the latest online SLAs from all your vendors,
and automatically notify you when SLA exceptions or viola-
tions occur, which may require action on your part, such as
requesting a credit or other SLA remedy.

07_9781119288497-ch04.indd 27 April 19, 2016 4:11 AM
DIYProcess‐Based
Workflows
In This Chapter
▶▶ Leveraging talent throughout the digital workplace
▶▶ Supporting employees anywhere and on any device
▶▶ Transforming key processes with the business apps panacea
▶▶ Replacing “shadow IT” applications and processes with scalable
solutions
In this chapter, you explore how a “do‐it‐yourself” (DIY)
business process apps solution can help jump‐start your
process improvement and process excellence initiatives.
Is Your IT Development Backlog
Holding You Back?
Many businesses have traditionally viewed application devel-
opment as an IT function. However, today’s digital workplace
and fast‐paced global economy (see Chapter 1) requires busi-
nesses to leverage an ever‐expanding base of individual tech-
nical skills throughout the organization.
The reality is that IT department resources are seriously con-
strained and can become bottlenecks for process improve-
ment and process excellence initiatives. Many IT departments
are locked into rigid software development life cycles that can
take months to deliver even relatively simple business appli-
cations. From requirements definition to coding, testing, and
Chapter 4

07_9781119288497-ch04.indd 28 April 19, 2016 4:11 AM
maintenance, such formal processes — even those labeled
“agile” — can be too slow and inflexible to keep up with the
dynamic and rapidly evolving needs of the business. Teams of
developers, business analysts, and project managers add to
the cost and complexity of such projects.
But what if the individual employees in various departments
throughout the organization who understand their own day‐
to‐day challenges best had powerful, easy‐to‐use, drag‐and‐
drop tools that enabled them to access the data and build the
applications they need for themselves? A low‐code business
process apps solution can empower your employees to auto-
mate and optimize workflows and forms in a fraction of the
time — and at a fraction of the cost — required for traditional
IT development efforts. You really can do it yourself!
Overhauling Your Workflows
for the Mobile Age
Businesses today are under more pressure than ever to
identify process bottlenecks and inefficiencies, and eliminate
them through automation. To accomplish these tasks, IT and
business leaders often target manual workflows and paper‐
based forms because they are cumbersome, time‐consuming,
and can’t easily accommodate today’s mobile workforce and
mobile consumer.
Business process apps solutions can breathe new life into
tired, manual workflows. They can streamline processes
and connect disparate line‐of‐business (LOB) systems so
that employees can work smarter and perform tasks faster.
And when business applications are supported on mobile
devices, employees can work more efficiently wherever they
go. However, it can be challenging for resource‐constrained
IT departments to quickly design and update apps that work
across multiple platforms, such as desktop and laptop com-
puters, tablets, and smartphones, among others.
IT and other departments throughout your organization can
benefit from a business process apps solution that simplifies
the design and rollout of apps for the mobile workforce.

Chapter 4: DIY Process‐Based Workflows 29
07_9781119288497-ch04.indd 29 April 19, 2016 4:11 AM
Demand meets modernization
What if an account executive needs to onboard a new cus-
tomer at a sales conference, but she can’t remotely access
your systems to begin the process? Her work-around is
simple: She manually uploads the forms to a cloud‐based
storage service before the conference and then accesses the
form using her smartphone during the conference.
But how comfortable are you with work-arounds such as
these? Consider the following potential issues and concerns:
✓✓ How long will the onboarding process be delayed until
the account executive is back in the office and able to
enter the information into your enterprise systems?
✓✓ Did the account executive obtain all the required infor-
mation to onboard the new customer, or will someone
have to contact the customer again?
✓✓ Is your new customer’s sensitive information — such as
a credit application, IRS Form W‐9, and Dun Bradstreet
data — being kept private in the cloud?
✓✓ Is sensitive data on your employees’ smartphones
encrypted?
✓✓ What happens if someone loses a smartphone?
✓✓ How do you ensure policy and regulatory compliance?
How will you verify your compliance status during
audits?
You’ve probably already felt the impact of similar sce-
narios in your organization. According to IDG’s Enterprise
Consumerization of IT in the Enterprise Study 2014:
✓✓ Ninety percent of employees use consumer‐oriented,
cloud‐based services, like Skype and LinkedIn, for their
work.
✓✓ Seventy‐nine percent use cloud‐based file sharing
and collaboration tools, such as Dropbox, Microsoft
SharePoint, or Microsoft OneDrive.
✓✓ Forty percent of employees use their own smartphones
for work.

07_9781119288497-ch04.indd 30 April 19, 2016 4:11 AM
The bring your own apps (BYOA) trend — an extension of the
consumerization of IT and bring your own device (BYOD) — is
hard evidence of what employees already know: Current busi-
ness processes are not fully meeting their needs. If they were,
your employees wouldn’t feel compelled to find their own
solutions from outside sources.
More and more businesses are embracing the move to a
mobile, digital work style. They need to support workers who
are on the go, working online and off. Yet many IT leaders feel
that productivity gains and other benefits of mobility remain
out of reach because outdated manual processes hinder prog-
ress toward modernization.
Many IT directors understand the complexity involved in
connecting information from critical LOB systems to mobile
workers on a variety of devices with different form factors.
According to 78 percent of business managers and executives
in a recent MIT Sloan Management Review survey, achieving
digital transformation will become critical to their organiza-
tions within the next two years. However, 63 percent said the
pace of technology change in their organization is too slow.
To automate a workflow with a custom business app, IT typi-
cally needs to devote extensive time and costly development
resources to planning, coding, testing, and rollout.
Companies embracing mobility
Mobile devices may have started as
a BYOD challenge for companies, but
they have now found a permanent
home as a productivity boost. Cloud‐
based storage and apps expand the
limits of what users can do with a
handheld device.
According to the Intel IT Center,
“Employees report saving an aver-
age of 57 minutes a day using mobile
devices — that’s nearly an hour
of productivity gained each day by
simply providing a different way to
work. Think of the productivity ben-
efits you could gain by scaling this
flexibility across your entire orga-
nization, ultimately reducing the
cost of doing business” (http://
blog.azoft.com/mobile‐
business‐process‐auto
mation‐with‐workflow‐
examples/).

07_9781119288497-ch04.indd 31 April 19, 2016 4:11 AM
Empowering mobile users
Numerous workflows can be created or enhanced using
mobile‐centric design principles. For example:
✓✓ Accountants can automate various accounts receiv-
able and accounts payable processes, such as customer
credit applications, account management, customer and
vendor onboarding, and invoice approval, so that LOB
managers and other department personnel can easily
complete routine finance tasks from anywhere and on
any device.
✓✓ Purchasing departments can publish approved vendor
lists and catalogs for use by different departments
throughout the organization, and easily forward vendor
onboarding forms and vendor compliance guides, for
example, to potential new vendors.
Automating workflows to
increase efficiency
How can you quickly and affordably make your business
mobile? Before answering that question, consider what a
transformed, modernized business process might look like.
A modern business process app does the following:
✓✓ Automates workflows and forms, increasing productivity
and reducing errors
✓✓ Eliminates manual processes and costly delays
✓✓ Empowers employees to work smarter and faster by pro-
viding all the information they need, in context, on any
device
Some examples of common workflows and processes that can
be easily and affordably automated with a low‐code business
process apps solution include:
✓✓ Account management: Get a complete view of customer
information and bring the right people, approach, and
solutions together to better meet customer needs.

07_9781119288497-ch04.indd 32 April 19, 2016 4:11 AM
✓✓ Billing: Reduce errors, expedite revenue generation, and
more efficiently manage billing through workflows that
supply the right data to the right people in the billing
process.
✓✓ Purchasing: Track, report, automate, and correlate
inventory to purchasing workflows to ensure that the
supply chain continues to run efficiently.
Building Business Apps
that Transform Finance
and Purchasing
Many businesses have found process nirvana with custom,
easy‐to‐use business applications that can run on any
device — from a browser to a smartphone. These apps
address specific LOB needs in a way that can dramatically
increase efficiency.
The promised, transformative results include:
✓✓ Streamlined processes
✓✓ Empowered mobile workers and customers
✓✓ Powerful insight into business trends
✓✓ Better, data‐driven decision making
No doubt, businesses are always looking for ways to work
smarter and faster. They need tools that allow them to quickly
create system‐spanning forms, and they need reliable work-
flows to securely deliver information to the right people at the
right time.
For example, customer onboarding apps might need to use
data from across services and systems — such as Box, CRM
systems, and Microsoft SharePoint — whether on premises
or in the cloud. To be effective, business apps should accom-
modate any system that users rely on and should not require
complex coding (see Figure 4‐1).

07_9781119288497-ch04.indd 33 April 19, 2016 4:11 AM
Most businesses can’t afford to design and maintain multiple,
customized versions of every app for different form factors.
Every small update would require another round of develop-
ment changes, testing, and distribution.
Businesses are turning to low‐code, drag‐and‐drop software
solutions and tools that support fast, responsive app design.
As a result, these businesses are able to roll out new or
updated apps rapidly, for all form factors.
Responsive design is an approach to web design that opti-
mizes a website or web‐based application for optimal viewing
and navigation on any device or form factor.
Managing and reporting capabilities are in high demand as
well. A good management dashboard allows managers to view
and act on all tasks from a central location, while detailed
out‐of‐the‐box reporting and scorecards display how their
processes are performing and helps them identify trends or
efficiency gaps that can improve risk management and fore-
casting.
An agile business process apps solution with these charac-
teristics delivers value to end users and businesses in days
or weeks, instead of months, and businesses report drastic
reductions in their development costs.
Figure 4-1: K2 business process apps connect users on any device to
systems on premises and in the cloud.

07_9781119288497-ch04.indd 34 April 19, 2016 4:11 AM
Future Proofing with Scalable
Apps You Can Build Yourself
As businesses grow, their business applications must scale
easily to support new and emerging needs. Current “shadow
IT” applications and processes — which exist in organiza-
tions far too frequently — can be critical to everyday business
workflows, but are unknown to, and therefore unsupported
by, corporate IT departments. These applications and pro-
cesses may consist of elaborate spreadsheets that have been
built, maintained and “password‐protected” by individual
employees over the years, or cloud‐based services and appli-
cations such as Box, Dropbox, and OneDrive.
Deploying a low‐code business process apps solution empow-
ers employees in every department to replace these shadow
IT applications and processes with scalable front‐end applica-
tions that integrate easily with complex, disparate backend
systems — that they can build themselves!
IFCO streamlines account management
and automates processes
IFCO Systems is an international
logistics service provider with more
than 210 locations worldwide and
annual revenues of more than $735
million. In the United States, IFCO
provides a national network of pal-
let management services. With
more than 125 million pallets sorted,
repaired, and reissued annually, IFCO
is the market leader in this industry.
IFCO was dealing with siloed infor-
mation, a lack of process visibility,
and a heavy administrative load.
“Our sales teams are constantly
bringing on more customers and
vendors, so our turnaround time for
account processing needed to be
fast,” says Chuck Koch, Director
of Information Technology, IFCO
Systems NA, Inc. “However, due
to rapid growth over the years, we
were fighting huge inefficiencies in
our processes and suffering from
multiple versions of the truth when it
came to account information.”
When a new customer or vendor
was being onboarded with the com-
pany, information was typically sub-
mitted to an account setup specialist
via fax or email. The information then
had to be validated and checked for
completeness, which sometimes

07_9781119288497-ch04.indd 35 April 19, 2016 4:11 AM
(continued)
included back‐and‐forth communi-
cations to the account originator.
After everything was validated and
approved, the information then had
to be entered into the company’s
CRM, financial, order management,
and proprietary operational systems.
The manual entry in multiple systems
was time consuming, resulted in mis-
takes, and led to inconsistent data.
Finding information was sometimes
a chore because different systems
may have held different data on the
same customer. Inconsistencies
in account information were espe-
cially troublesome if one system was
updated and another was not.
The process also relied on emails
and didn’t have automatic work-
flows in place, so processes were
often inconsistent and provided little
visibility. Approvals and task comple-
tion could be slow because people
were keeping their own work lists,
and misunderstandings sometimes
accompanied expectations.
Solution
IFCO’s new K2‐enabled IFCOLogix
system streamlines the management
of customer and vendor information
across multiple LOB applications,
and it provides consistency in data
quality and auditability.
“We saw the potential for efficiency
gains with a system that would auto-
mate our processes and eliminate
errors and redundant tasks,” Koch
said. “K2 enabled us to create some-
thing precisely suited to our systems
and our business requirements.”
Rather than enter information in
three systems, IFCO general manag-
ers and account managers can enter
information in a single InfoPath form
(pulled from SharePoint) and count
on that data to be consistent across
all the company’s LOB systems.
“Now we have one point of entry,
so data only has to be entered once.
The workflow takes care of the rest,”
Koch said.
“In the first year of operation, we
automated more than 9,000 new
account requests and updated
approval processes. By eliminating
duplicate data entry, faxing, emailing
forms, manual data validation, and
error resolution for each instance,
we have experienced a substantial
time savings as well as a significant
improvement in overall data quality
across the enterprise. This auto-
mation makes us more effective in
where we spend our time by allow-
ing people to focus on more value‐
driven activities; it improves visibility
and reporting; and the data valida-
tion rules significantly reduce back‐
office administrative issues.”
The system automatically routes
documents and forms to the appro-
priate approvers, and upon comple-
tion of the workflow, K2 takes care of
creating or updating account infor-
mation in all the dependent systems.
The solution provides visibility and
tracking, notifications and escala-
tions, and reporting capabilities.
“With the enhanced reporting capa-
bilities of K2, we are able to easily

07_9781119288497-ch04.indd 36 April 19, 2016 4:11 AM
identify process bottlenecks. This
gives us greater visibility into our
account onboarding process while
providing us with necessary data for
identifying potential improvements,”
Koch said.
The account management workflow
module of IFCOLogix was easy to
build, Koch said, with K2’s simple,
intuitive tools. The solution brings
together technologies the company
was already using — SharePoint,
Dynamics CRM, Dynamics SL —
and now IFCO is using K2 to bring
efficiency into other parts of the
business.
“People think about processes and
information in very different ways.
You can have two products that
do the same thing, yet they may go
about it in very different ways,” Koch
said. “K2’s process‐activity‐event
approach is in line with how we
think about processes, so the learn-
ing curve is short.”
IFCO has also implemented new
K2‐based solutions for credit memo
approvals and is working on an AP
invoice approval process.
(continued)

08_9781119288497-ch05.indd 37 April 19, 2016 4:11 AM
BuildingtheBusinessCase
forProcessTransformation
In This Chapter
▶▶ Driving revenue‐growth opportunities
▶▶ Delivering an intuitive and flexible customer experience
▶▶ Aligning internal and customer‐facing processes
In this chapter, you discover how business process trans-
formation can radically improve internal efficiency and
increase revenue opportunities for your business.
Focusing on Revenue Growth
Opportunities
The case for business process transformation is often built on
opportunities for cost reduction and process improvement,
but a far more compelling case for executives today centers
on revenue growth.
This means focusing on processes that accelerate revenue
growth while protecting existing revenue streams. When
engineered effectively, such processes can reduce costs
and improve efficiency by reducing or eliminating workflow
bottlenecks and manual errors, and net significant revenue
growth through the creation and realization of new revenue
opportunities.
Chapter 5

08_9781119288497-ch05.indd 38 April 19, 2016 4:11 AM
Protecting existing revenue streams requires a business pro-
cess apps solution with deep integration to corporate back‐
end systems and cloud applications and services that your
business may already be using. Such integration capabilities
provide a way for businesses to centralize and control the
data in business apps while maintaining the confidentiality
and integrity of the information in its system of record. The
capability to securely route information to the right people
improves business efficiency while ensuring that governance
and compliance requirements are enforced.
Low‐code business apps solutions with drag‐and‐drop design
tools are ideal for building agile processes. Business users
who regularly work with, and therefore best understand, the
necessary workflows and processes can quickly and easily
build flexible, customizable work apps and forms that acceler-
ate key processes and increase revenue growth opportunities
without disrupting existing revenue streams.
Improving Planning with Better
Financial Insights
Finance departments can support better decision making
throughout their organizations with data about past perfor-
mance and financial outlooks. Such deep financial insights
empower managers across all business functions to improve
business resource planning in their respective areas of
responsibility. Creating process-based workflows and forms
that integrate with financial systems can make this data
actionable.
A study by The Hackett Group found that “64 percent of
finance organizations believe that their functional analytics
improve the quality of their decision making” and that a
“lack of integration [with other internal finance processes or
enterprise planning and operational systems] contributes
to inefficient, ineffective outcomes” (Financial Planning and
Analysis: Key Enablers for Improving Performance and Value,
The Hackett Group, August 2015).

Chapter 5: Building the Business Case for Process Transformation 39
08_9781119288497-ch05.indd 39 April 19, 2016 4:11 AM
Aligning Processes Throughout
Your Organization for
Operational Excellence
Look across your entire organization and value chain for busi-
ness process transformation opportunities that will drive
innovation.
A business process apps solution that is powerful enough to
solve any process‐based need while being agile, flexible, and
easy to use, can be a competitive differentiator for businesses
that use it to transform key processes to achieve operational
excellence.
The right business process apps solution can be the differen-
tiator that helps your organization increase revenue oppor-
tunities. Now more than ever before, companies need to view
business process transformation through a lens that captures
more than just the automation of core processes. The solution
you choose should also have the speed, agility, and flexibility
needed to adapt to your organization’s unique requirements.

08_9781119288497-ch05.indd 40 April 19, 2016 4:11 AM

09_9781119288497-ch06.indd 41 April 19, 2016 4:11 AM
TenKeysforTransforming
BusinessProcesses
In This Chapter
▶▶ Empowering your users
▶▶ Integrating systems and tools securely and easily
▶▶ Enabling standardization, mobility, and measurable results
In this chapter, I present ten important capabilities for you
to consider when choosing a business process apps solu-
tion for your organization.
Empower Users with Easy,
Do‐It‐Yourself Tools
A low‐code business process apps solution must provide
easy‐to‐use, visual design tools that enable subject matter
experts (SMEs) and business users to quickly and easily
build automated forms and workflows themselves, without
extensive — and expensive — IT development.
Automate Manual, Error‐Prone
Processes
Manual, paper‐based workflows and forms are inefficient and
error prone. Automate finance and procurement processes to
eliminate opportunities for costly mistakes and drive greater
efficiency throughout your organization.
Chapter 6

09_9781119288497-ch06.indd 42 April 19, 2016 4:11 AM
Go Beyond Process Automation
with Process Improvement
Automating a poorly designed manual process won’t fix your
existing process problems, but finding a solution that pro-
vides insight into bottlenecks and other process pitfalls and
inefficiencies will. Choose a business process apps solution
that provides metrics and reporting dashboards that you can
use to look for opportunities to improve all your processes.
Integrate Seamlessly with
Existing Systems and
Reusable Components
Reusable building blocks that connect to external systems like
Salesforce or Microsoft Dynamics CRM have been established
and can be reused across any number of interfaces and pro-
cesses. This way, a new integration point does not need to be
built every time integration to a particular system is needed.
This reuse of the integration point lets you quickly and easily
pull together information from disparate systems into a single
view for easy approval, analysis, and decision making.
Another advantage of reusable building blocks is that all
integration points with external systems look and behave in
the same way. You can use data from disparate systems —
such as Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, SAP, Microsoft
SQL Server, Microsoft SharePoint, Oracle, Box, Google Drive,
and more — easily without having to learn the nuances that
pertain to a particular technology. Business users can then
access critical information from these systems without ever
having to access them or learn how these systems operate.
Interfaces and process designs can be reused across multiple
applications as well, ensuring that as technical assets are
developed, applications become faster and easier to build.

Chapter 6: Ten Keys for Transforming Business Processes 43
09_9781119288497-ch06.indd 43 April 19, 2016 4:11 AM
Deliver Information at
the Point of Need
Your business users must be able to easily access data from
multiple sources with your business process apps solution,
thereby eliminating the need to have lots of technical knowl-
edge to access source systems of record, such as customer
relationship management (CRM) and enterprise resource
planning (ERP) applications.
Enable Advanced Analytics
and Reporting
A business process apps solution should connect disparate
systems, applications, and data throughout the organization
and in the cloud to enable powerful insights and better deci-
sion making. Intuitive, graphical dashboards and reporting
capabilities are a must.
Drive Change with Flexibility
and Agility
A business process apps solution should be scalable in a way
that allows standardization across departments and regions.
It should also be agile and flexible enough to allow processes
across the business to be automated in a short amount of
time and updated just as easily.
Balance Power and Simplicity
A business process apps solution doesn’t need to be mas-
sive or complicated and long‐drawn‐out to be successful; it
just needs to solve the challenges faced by the business. The
platform should be able to handle a wide variety of process
workflows and complex event handling and rules, as well as to
manage data across disparate sources.

09_9781119288497-ch06.indd 44 April 19, 2016 4:11 AM
Provide Secure Mobile Access to
Forms, Workflows, and Data
Today’s business users expect to be able to work from any-
where, at any time, on any device — whether it’s a laptop
computer, smartphone, or tablet.
Beyond simply downloading a printable form from Box or
Google Drive, a business process apps solution should enable
a purchasing manager, for example, to quickly and easily
complete an online form, such as a purchase order, on the
purchasing manager’s mobile phone, and automatically route
it to the appropriate department managers for approval.
Measure and Report
Your Results
A business process apps solution should be able to provide
real process improvement that can be measured. The plat-
form should also provide visibility into the process itself,
immediate insight into the cause of roadblocks, and the capa-
bility to actually measure how instances are performing in
terms of cycle time, data expectations, and consistent use.
This approach enables business users to make objective judg-
ment calls and decisions with regard to change.
K2’s approach meets all these requirements. The K2 business
process apps solution offers the business process improve-
ments that organizations need. It also provides businesses
with a continuous innovation capability that allows them to
easily change processes in the future. K2 has a set of easy
drag‐and‐drop tools that companies can use to build low‐
code, scalable applications composed of workflows and forms
that automate business processes and easily integrate with
industry‐leading IT systems. Finally, K2 solutions allow pro-
cess management to become what it should be: an integral
part of knowledge capture, process improvement, compliance
management, and business agility.

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