Deutsche Post

Deutsche Post Enhances Customer Service with FileNet-eReview German Pension Fund Agency

The Business Challenge

Being the principal provider of postal services for Germany and a part of one of the world’s largest logistics groups, Deutsche Post World Net, it was imperative for Deutsche Post to daily handle and process volumes of documents and records related to shipments, merchandise, bookings, customer credentials, orders etc. Consequently all their internal departmental functions involving HR, accounting and administrative procedures were greatly reliant on the accurate preservation, processing and propagation of these documents and records to and from internal or external entities. DP’s inter and intra-organizational processes being inundated by this enormous amount of paperwork, serving and satisfying a globally dispersed clientele was indeed a major challenge.

Given their extensive supply chain, there was a potential risk of time and cost constraints becoming major bottlenecks to the effective execution of DP’s workflow. A thick-client document viewing application had been taking care of DP’s document visualization requirements to an extent, but in order to systematically manage their complex workflow, there was clearly a need to have a more advanced and competent document review, management and approval system in place.

Some of the key challenges were:

• The solution needed to achieve a superior document review, management, and approval workflow to efficiently process customer shipments. It had to have the capability to smoothly integrate and adapt to the specific processes of the organization.
• The view and markup application would need to be seamlessly integrated with FileNet and SAP.
• The solution had to significantly shorten the cycle of reaching and serving globally dispersed customers. The priority was to optimize administrative, HR, invoice and AR processing so that accounting staff could access, view, collaborate and resolve all customer queries on the spot from their desktop without having to make follow up calls.
• Since the learning curve was exceptionally short compared to the scale of deployment, from the user’s perspective, the application had to closely resemble the existing IDM viewer. The previously created IDM Viewer annotations had to be imported to new eReview Viewer.

The Solution

Streamlining the processing of critical documents and records, the eReview-FileNet integrated solution ensured enhanced customer service for DP, enabling them to reach and attend their customers as and when required.

• Being integrated into the DP electronic Document processing architecture, eReview allows quick access to the pertinent documents for viewing, annotation and stamping depending on the business rules and privileges set into FileNet Open Client, Image Services. An array of file formats can be viewed natively without any originating application; Annotations, book-keeper’s approval stamps can be applied as layers on the base documents
• Being a highly interoperable application with a rich set of APIs, eReview is seamlessly integrated with FileNet and SAP. The detailed documents are captured electronically, stored in the FileNet archives and linked with SAP Business objects. From the document workflow started in the SAP the user can select the document and load it from the repository in eReview. Once the document is loaded in eReview, it automatically loads the annotations like “approve”, “reject” or other remarks. Subsequently, the remarks are saved in the document repository to be auto-loaded at the next call. The next member in the workflow can load the document from the SAP Document workflow and proceed due to the appropriate remarks further with the document, until the business operation is final
• Streamlining their HR, Accounting, Administrative and other internal procedures the solution helps DP ensure timely service to their customers. eReview being truly webbased and server centric, can be accessed by the staff to support and resolve customer queries from anywhere and at anytime through the web without any installations being required at the client end
• Transition from IDM viewer to eReview is smooth because previously created markups of IDM viewer can be easily imported by the eReview annotation engine. eReview UI, being highly customizable and configurable allows the users to start with interface similar to the old system and gradually advance to more complex features on demand. This minimizes the training time, effort and cost. This minimized any learning curve for the new product
   

The Bottom Line ROI

The solution endowed Deutsche Post with manifold benefits:

• Shift from manual handling of paperwork implied quicker and easier decision making by greatly minimizing the length of the decision making cycle
• Bridging physical distance in a global business environment, it reduces travel cost, risks and time. Directly from one’s desktop one can now access the global data warehouse
• Any authorized user can retrieve and stamp an image or a document in the smooth online document workflow thus greatly reducing the time required for the an approval procedure
  bullet Online document review and collaboration results in faster and cheaper processing