Samaritan's Purse Canada

TL;DR

too long; didn’t read

Samaritan’s Purse Canada, a Christian international relief organization, faced challenges with their manual travel authorization process, leading to delays and inefficiencies in their disaster relief and medical missions. Mervis Elebe, the Application Support Manager, sought a solution to streamline this process. After researching various options, they chose Nutrient Workflow for its customizable workflow processes, intuitive interface, and critical delegation feature for approvals. The implementation of Nutrient Workflow has been successful, leading to a positive reception from users, a reduction in approval process timeframes, and the initiation of further automation projects like the purchasing order workflow. This has increased efficiency, time savings, and reduced errors for the organization.

Background

Samaritan’s Purse Canada is a Christian international relief organization that helps meet the needs of victims of war, poverty, natural disasters, disease, and famine. Since 1973, the organization has worked to relieve suffering through medical response, safe water, food and livelihoods, Operation Christmas Child shoebox gifts, and many other projects.
We spoke with Mervis Elebe, an Application Support Manager at Samaritan’s Purse Canada. Mervis leads a team of competent solution specialists to deliver strategic solutions to their internal clients while overseeing daily support for the organization’s suite of applications. “We anticipate operational needs and align with the organization’s core values and strategic vision—and leverage this to implement systems, procedures, and solutions that enable our staff to be successful. The team serves as a bridge between technology and operational departments, communicating the value of the various tools at their disposal.”

The Challenge

Streamlining travel authorization processes emerged as a significant hurdle in the vast array of activities undertaken by Samaritan’s Purse Canada, spanning disaster relief initiatives to medical missions. 

“Our previous manual process for travel authorization was not as efficient as we needed it to be, particularly within our unique context as a relief organization, where the need to respond swiftly to crises is paramount,” reflects Elebe.

One prominent challenge emerged from the physical absence of decision-makers. Elebe recalls, “We had scenarios where managers who needed to approve travel for their teams were deployed in the field for days or weeks at a time.” This absence often led to unnecessary delays in the approval process, hindering the organization’s ability to mobilize swiftly. “We also had scenarios where travel required a second level of approval and got held up on one level—delaying time-critical travel,” Elebe shared. This could cause significant bottlenecks for the organization and the communities in need.

Adding to the complexity, approved travel authorization forms often went missing, necessitating travelers to restart the process. Samaritan’s Purse Canada, with its commitment to swift and effective disaster relief and medical missions, faced significant hurdles with its manual travel authorization process. A solution that could adapt to the organization’s unique structure and policies while offering an intuitive interface was also required.

Why Nutrient Workflow?

It was essential to find a solution to tackle the challenges that the team’s travel authorization process presented. As the team searched for a streamlined solution, they researched many solutions and ultimately chose Nutrient Workflow. Something that stood out about Nutrient Workflow was the delegation feature. Mervis shared, “The concept of delegation for our approvals process was critical.” 

Nutrient Workflow immediately demonstrated three benefits to the team and ultimately proved to be the best fit:

1. Nutrient Workflow allows customers to build customizable workflow processes and has an intuitive interface.

2. Nutrient Workflow demonstrated that they had a proven solution and experience in helping organizations transition from a manual to an automated process with their software.

3. Nutrient Workflow’s customizable workflow allows permissions and approvals to reflect an organization’s structure and policies already in place but in an automated structure.

Mervis said, “Nutrient Workflow and its support team satisfied [our] requirements.” Once Nutrient Workflow was chosen, it was time to begin the implementation process.

Implementation

Implementation has gone well, and they were able to roll out their process to the organization within the envisioned timeframe. If any technical hurdles presented themselves, the Nutrient Workflow team was able to provide helpful guidance to Mervis and the team. 

Mervis shared that the team has also had a great experience during the implementation phase. “The reception has been positive. Users are happy with the shortened approval process timeframe.”

What They’ve Built

With the initial need for the travel authorization process implemented, the team realized what else could be automated. The following process they automated was the purchasing order workflow. 

“These automated workflows have sped up our processes, saved time, and reduced errors.”

Some examples of tasks from the travel authorization are:

1. The initial requester sends the request to their manager, and if the traveler is not a staff member (e.g., one of our volunteers), the request is routed to the Executive Director.

2. When a manager or director travels, they can delegate tasks to someone responsible for approving requests.

3. When a request has been made and approved, and new information is received, such as a change in flight cost, they can amend the travel authorization, and the new changes go for approval.

Results

Since metrics were not recorded before automation, there are no specific numbers for results, but aside from numbers, the results have been positive! Users are very pleased with using Nutrient Workflow so far; that alone is an amazing result. 

What’s Next?

With the success of the two processes running at the organization, it was time to consider what was next for their automation journey. They have an approval workflow in mind regarding what Samaritan’s Purse Canada would use Nutrient Workflow for next. “We are currently planning the automation of other high-volume forms-based processes and will look to add expense approvals to streamline our operations further.”