Case Study - Investment Approval Workflow Application

1. Designing and delivering end to end Investment
Approval Workflow Application for World's leading
Confectionary and Gum Manufacturing Company
Our client is a fully owned subsidiary of a with the new approval application created
global conglomerate confectionary and for the same location, realization on ROI
gum manufacturer, headquartered in for the old application with the new one
Lainate, Italy, started its operations in India was not possible.
in 1994. The company today enjoys 30%
Flexibility The hard copy forms were not
market share, thus making them one of the
flexible at all because every time any
leading players in the confectionery
changes which was proposed by the
industry in India.
approver or any authority, the application
Today it has more than 15 brands under was to be re-done again.
their umbrella. It employs 17,000 people
SOLUTION
and has 30 subsidiaries across the globe
Our client wanted to have a system in
and distributes its products in over 130
place, in order to overcome the issues faced
countries.
by the business users using the traditional
CHALLENGES or manual approach for the investment
Our client was using a traditional way to approval applications. In this approach the
trace the capex investment approvals from user fills an approval form in excel sheet
the designated authorities due to which manually and send across the
they were facing a lot of issues in terms of:- hardcopy/softcopy for reviewing and
approval process in various concern
Visibility The business users were finding it
department.
difficult to see the traction on the
investment approval workflows To overcome these challenges, Progressive
designed & developed an Investment
Responsibility & Accountability The
Approval Workflow Application based on
management had a tough time tracking for
MS SharePoint 2010 to simplify the whole
the application as the business users were
process, have more accurate, error free &
not accountable for the same.
fast feedback on the approval process.
Manageability Managing bulk approval
The system "Investment Approval
forms in a hard copy format was a
Workflow Application" was developed to
cumbersome process and required more
support and assist management and
effort and cost to manage it.
finance to keep track of amount invested
Accessibility It was a tedious work to find on behalf of the budget allocated on
the hard copy of the investment approval various project running at different
applications if required by the location and globally in timely manner.
management for a reference. Manual
Not only this, but it also facilitated
searching in the piles of papers and
management to take decision on Budget
applications were the only alternative -
allocation for the next year for various
consuming a lot of time and effort.
other projects.
Realization on ROI The users were finding
this as a monotonous task accessing the old
document to check if there is any relation

2. Application is designed to support N level • Centralize important business
of reviewer and n level of approver, documents and processes in a single
keeping in mind that there could be solution.
different reviewing and approving
• Consolidating data and increasing
authority in different department.
visibility into and access to associated
Application has flexibility to get master data and information
data like users details, product details,
• Increasing the flexibility and functionality
category of product, location details,
of current infrastructure and data
department details and other business
data either by means of manual form entry, • Leveraging existing systems by
by uploading excel sheet directly into the integrating workflows to business
system and also by fetching data directly applications
from SAP ERP application.
• Establishing a common language and
Respective roles were designated to all the platform for business-IT alignment.
users to perform task like to create
• Realization on ROI is visible because of
investment application, review investment
quick access of investment data and their
application and to approve the same. Only
comparison and analysis on it.
authorized users with specific roles are
allowed to login into the system and • Integration with SAP to import master
depending on the roles allocated, user data.
performs his tasks.
• Supports Microsoft Office - Excel to
Communication between the businesses upload bulk data.
users is channeled through email
• Functionality to export Investment
notification depending on the level of the
Approval application in multiple formats
"Approval Application" has reached.
including excel, pdf.
The Approval Application designed also
• Gives clear picture on change in
maintains the timeline of approval process
investment amount because of change in
to facilitate control by the management
global economy.
which also helps in giving the exact picture
of the time lag / delay in the process in Application will be entirely web based, and
which stages and by whom. requires no software or add-ins on user
desktops for execution, reporting and
Rich user view and dashboard displays the
monitoring. Progressive incorporates a web
current & the pending activities of users,
based architecture built with the latest
snapshot of the approval form and pictorial
enabling technologies available from
view of number of approval from has been
Microsoft SharePoint 2010. This increases
closed or pending in a particular period.
end user adoption, and minimizes training
KEY HIGHLIGHTS efforts. The system is IT friendly and
Progressive highlights following points designed with enterprise class scalability
during the deployment of the Investment from departmental installations to global
Approval Workflow Application:- deployments.
• Create business value quickly through Progressive team worked closely with the
improved content management and client to ensure that the installation and
business workflow user acceptance goes smoothly. After the
installation process the solution was tested
• Connect your employees to each other
with the Business user to ensure the
and business information without
performance as per client's requirement
complex development work.
and expectation.

3. Architecture diagram
User View
Architecture diagram
Administrative View