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In 1997, Siemens Business Services (SBS) was a awarded a 10-year contract by a major Government agency to develop, implement and manage a system for the automated processing of application documents - converting paper to electronic format.
SBS brought in Trinity Horne, a consulting and technology business, to further optimise the business process and management through the introduction of coaching, process re-engineering and software tools.
With Trinity Horne’s business analysts focused on business process improvement, it was the company’s Red Owl™ business performance management application that would enable the back-office environment to manage improved operational capacity through the more effective use of people and processes.
Dynamic dashboard
Fred Warren, Senior Business Analyst at Trinity Horne explained: “The problem with business process improvement is that it can often be invisible - which makes it hard for organisations to secure ‘buy in’ from staff. The brief from SBS was to provide them with a ‘wow factor’ through the displaying of reports. We wanted to exceed this expectation by going one step further and having a custom built ‘dynamic dashboard’.”
A key step in this process has been the implementation was a new intranet-based application that enables SBS to track application processing performance in graphical form via giant plasma screens at their offices. “The concept was to have two or more giant plasma screens at each site to show graphically the performance of the agency’s teams,” said Warren.
RedOwl™ has a whole suite of reporting in use for SBS, of which the plasma screen is a small subset for a very specific purpose.
Monochrome develops Adobe Flash application
“We concluded that we needed an Adobe Flash application to make this a reality. Adobe recommended one of its partners, Monochrome, to develop it for us,” added Warren.
Monochrome is an Adobe Alliance Partner and specialises in the development of Flash, Flex, Breeze and ColdFusion applications that enable organisations to benefit from highly visual and intuitive Internet, intranet and extranet interactions.
“We put together a very detailed brief in terms of the ‘look and feel’ of the application and the logic behind it,” added Warren. “The plasma application was there to help people have visibility of process performance, team performance and site performance in context of actual work and timeliness.”
Monochrome met the requirement by creating a highly visual, intuitive and easy-to-use Flash-based application. “The graphical display conceived and designed by Trinity Horne and rendered by Monochrome is like a ‘speedometer’ showing performance against agreed service levels, with traffic light (red/amber/green) colours to show tolerances around that,” said Warren. “The display is updated every half-hour, enabling managers to see throughput of applications, better allocate and manage their resources and introduce an element of cross-site competition.”
The timescale to develop and implement the application was very short. “Monochrome spent three weeks from start of development to delivery, which was very fast,” said Warren. “We built up an excellent relationship with the Monochrome guys, to the point where we now regard them as part of our core development skill set. We hope to do a lot of work with the company in the future.”
The ‘wow factor’
Feedback from SBS and the client has been very positive. “We’ve had very good comments on the way the Flash application works and is rendered,” concluded Warren. “For SBS the plasma screen production models represent a ‘wow factor’ in terms of the services it provides to its client and differentiates it from other outsourced providers. Anyone visiting the agency’s offices can instantly see what’s going on – it’s highly visible.”
For further information visit:
www.monochrome.com
www.trinityhorne.com
www.sbs.siemens.co.uk
www.adobe.com
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