The Business Challenge
MasterCard International, a global pioneer in credit card and financial services in St. Louis, Missouri, needed to eliminate its paper process for approving hardware and software changes to its global network. The goal was to automate the process, allow all participants to quickly complete their tasks, have universal access to necessary information, reduce implementation time, and create an audit trail for effective process analysis. The challenge was to implement a working prototype in 40 billable hours, which could then be rolled into the production application.
The Axceler Solution
According to Tom Jolls, a senior engineer/consultant, "All of the backend workflow functionality could have been completed using LotusScript but it would have easily doubled or even tripled the time and budget. In addition, as with any project, additional requirements were added during the development phase, and they were much easier to implement in PowerFlow than in LotusScript. PowerFlow's ease of maintenance proved to be significant as well." By using PowerFlow, the budget and schedule were met and the new project design eliminated the need for LotusScript.
The Result
The new electronic process has remarkable improvements over the old paper system. The approval process cycle, once taking weeks for an individual document to be processed, decreased by 80%, reducing the average of 60 hours per document to 12 hours (based on a 24-hour day). The time spent on the initiation and approval processes was reduced by 92%, from 120 minutes to 10, eliminating the time previously spent making phone calls to gain voice approvals and gathering signatures. The number of signatures required was reduced from 10 to 1. Frustration with the process vanished and user satisfaction rose from 5% to an unprecedented 100% satisfaction rate. The company estimates its savings to be $350,000 annually, according to John Bolt of MasterCard's Process Improvement team.
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