ERC Innovates Internal Operations with Integrify | Integrify Case Study

TL;DR

too long; didn’t read

ERC came to Nutrient Workflow needing automation in their HR department. The team has already rolled out processes to HR, IT, Security, and contract sites and will next be looking for other areas to implement automation. They went from a few HR requests to 17 workflows in 18 months.

Background

ERC was established in 1988 by Dr. Y.C.L. Susan Wu, the first woman to be awarded a Ph.D. in Aeronautical Engineering from Caltech, and now has over 1,000 employees.

The organization works in many military and space research and development areas, including test and evaluation; operations and maintenance; and IT, software, and network administration. Their customers include NASA and different branches within the Department of Defense.

ERC has now been using Nutrient Workflow for just over two years.

The Challenge

The company had grown to a point where it was no longer feasible to pass PDF/Word documents around via email for review and approval. It also became clear that the organization had no way to track progress and expose bottlenecks within its processes. In addition, the workflow platform had to interface with their ERP system to ensure data accuracy and reduce rework.
Issues also included:
 

• Lack of visibility.

• Employees using out-of-date versions forms.

• Forms were not being filled out correctly.

• Missing information.

They also needed a way to make their current workflows more customized. According to the team, most off-the-shelf products came with fixed workflows that didn’t work for what ERC needed to do.

“Nutrient Workflow has allowed us to streamline a lot of processes that were either still on paper or not functioning very efficiently.” 
Mark Williams, Senior Business Systems Specialist, ERC

Why Nutrient Workflow?

ERC’s Deltek representative suggested ERC’s IT team contact Nutrient Workflow. Following the demonstration, the team decided Nutrient Workflow was a great fit for creating custom workflows and reducing rework by ensuring data accuracy due to its interface with their ERP system.

The team was focused on:

• Creating custom, rules-based workflows based on data being entered in forms. 

• Presenting users with dynamically driven form elements like search boxes and selectors tied to their accounting system’s data. 

• Pre-populating specific employee information to ensure data accuracy.

• Meeting all of ERC’s strict security requirements.

Workflow Implementation

Mark Williams, Senior Business Systems Specialist, said, “The implementation went very well. Nutrient Workflow’s staff initially held many coaching sessions with the ERC team to quickly get us up to speed.” 

Because Nutrient Workflow is a low-code, process application platform, the IT team could quickly develop forms and processes based on stakeholder meetings and then demo them for validation.

Evan Wright, Business Systems Specialist, ERC, added, “For the company, rolling out Nutrient Workflow was probably the most user-accepted implementation I’ve been a part of.” 

ERC’s Managers and frontline employees were very excited to see that IT was keeping up with modern trends of cloud-based solutions and finally moving away from paper-based processes.

What They’ve Built with Nutrient Workflow

The team started by building out the organization’s most commonly used internal processes and tackling guest-account-based processes. End-users quickly bought into the new system and were happy with the process improvements.

“Nutrient Workflow has allowed us to streamline many processes that were either still on paper or not functioning efficiently. It also allowed us to design these processes with the approval rules we wanted but could not have in our existing canned systems,” said Williams.

Most of the solutions the team built initially were designed to make HR more paperless, which included processes for job offer datasheets, Personnel Change Notices, Employee Terminations, etc. 

They have since been focusing on processes directly aimed at frontline employees, such as college tuition reimbursement, vacation buyback, security submissions, and, most recently, a workflow to improve the benefits enrollment process. They also have developed a Help Desk request system to track access requests and IT issues.

All told, ERC’s has automated a variety of processes, including:

• Health Care Open Enrollment

• College Tuition Reimbursement

• Conference Room Bookings

• Discipline and Warnings

• Employee Outreach

• Employee Terminations

• Foreign Travel

• IT Support Requests

• Job Offers

• Military Installation Visit Requests

• Personnel Change Notices

• Security Submissions

• Subcontractor Management

• System Access Requests

• Telework Agreements

• Tuition Assistance

• Vacation Buyback

“For the company, rolling out Nutrient Workflow was probably the most user-accepted implementation I’ve been a part of.” 
Evan Wright, Business Systems Specialist, ERC

Results

According to Williams, “The results have been outstanding with many of our managers and employees letting know how much they love the new processes and getting rid of the old way of filling out a form and emailing it around.”

For instance, the team has seen the best results within processes that deal with employee record changes. Employees find it easy to use, and Managers appreciate the workflow efficiencies. HR and Finance found Nutrient Workflow to be both efficient and effective in the reduction of processing time, the increase in data accuracy, and significantly reducing rework. While all these benefits were anticipated when evaluating Nutrient Workflow, there was an additional benefit identified post-implementation. This was the visibility of historical data. Managers found the ability to review past employee transactions extremely helpful in processing current workflow transactions. 

According to Wright, “Employee record changes was our original use case and proved our proof of concept that Nutrient Workflow could be a big benefit to ERC. The process involved a lot of administrative time and involved 6-7 levels of approval, outputting PDFs, many business rules, etc.”

The team has come to realize that Nutrient Workflow can handle a variety of business needs, from simple to complex processes. Also, because these processes are used across the organization, it has helped to shine a light on the IT team’s ability to solve problems and provide real, scalable business solutions. This is especially true because of the flexibility and customization that Nutrient Workflow provides, unlike other applications they have used in the past.

What’s Next?

The team has already rolled out processes to HR, IT, Security, and contract sites and will next be looking for other areas to implement automation. 
For instance, most of the process automation to date has been for form and approval-based workflow. The team plans to start building out processes that are more integrated with their existing enterprise stack, using more trigger-based, automated actions.

ERC has also moved to a concurrent license method, to allow more employees to use the system, especially those using processes only intermittently.