Jack Henry s jhaenterprise Workflow

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1 Jack Henry s jhaenterprise Workflow November Jack Henry s introduction of a true enterprise wide business process management solution. The jhaenterprise Workflow product brings a multitude of key benefits that positively impacts any organization s bottom line. Two major key benefits that differentiate the product from competitors are a high level of integration and flexibility. WHITE PAPER

2 Introducing jhaenterprise Workflow (EWF) is a new JHA product built for client institutions looking to automate business processes that include manual and automatic steps. These business processes may require the participation of multiple JHA products (Core, ECM, Platform, others) so EWF will provide unmatched integration with these and other applications. EWF is a process management tool, and its sole purpose is to manage a process and to be the system of record for auditing purposes. EWF is NOT an application to replace business logic already found in some of our other solutions like SilverLake or Synapsys. This is an ideal time for Jack Henry & Associates to develop an enterprise BPM solution. JHA began a standardized integration strategy 10 years ago with the introduction of the jxchange product. Subsequently, the desire to present one look and feel for all products then introduced the Xperience framework which enables product to come in to one UI. jhaenterprise Workflow leverages both of these strategies as it integrates across the JHA products and allows us to tie these solutions together using a process manager so that end users are presented with an enterprise workflow with one look and feel. Enterprise Workflow is abled because of two differentiating characteristics: flexibility and integration. The product s flexibility allows institutions to drop solutions into their process gaps and the existing/potential integration covers the institution s application gaps.

3 Product Nomenclature Business Process Management often interchanged with the term workflow this term is used to identify the automation of a process by way of activities handled by end users or automated activities to bring efficiency and standardization to an organization. Manual Activity (MA) the activity flow node within the defined process that consists of individual tasks that a worker uses to accomplish work that is to be completed. Worker the term used to identify the users that take and receive Manual Activities. Author the term used to identify the users that create the workflow definition within the Workflow Design Library. Workflow Instance term used to identify a single business process derived from the workflow definition in run time. Faulted Workflow a workflow instance has met an exception scenario that disqualifies the running instance. The exception must be handled before the instance can continue. Landing Zones term used to describe the five different areas within the workflow product Administration this is the area within the jhaenterprise Workflow where the solution administrator will create workflow user groups by gathering AD groups or users so that they can be matched to permission sets that are preconfigured. Within the same area, administrators can configure the business calendar and templates. Queue this is the area within the jhaenterprise Workflow product where workers take and receive work Monitor this is the area within the jhaenterprise Workflow product where managers/supervisors understand where a workflow instance in along the way. Includes the ability to identify faulted and held instances. Coverage this is the area within the jhaenterprise Workflow product where managers/supervisors manage queues and users. Queues can be placed into standby and users statuses can be flipped from available/unavailable. Design Library this is the area within the jhaenterprise Workflow product where authors take identified business processes and create them within the jhaenterprise Workflow product using activities.

4 Considering Common Business Processes Change Validation Institutions want checks and balances for all changes made in their environment as it pertains to core and ancillary application parameters they use to run their business. The jhaewf can standardize this process across all of the different applications as authors can define workflows to mandate the requirement to have a review for certain product areas that were changed. Approval Processing Many candidates for jhaenterprise Workflow have varying approval processes. This could be a scenario in which an invoice needs to be paid and if the amount is above a certain threshold multiple approvers need to approve and if it is below a threshold only one approver needs to approve. The jhaenterprise Workflow solution can accommodate these scenarios as well as automatically updating ECM with outcomes and pushing the approval information to third party applications like a payment system. QC Validation jhaenterprise Workflow has tight integration with the Synergy ECM product and part of that integration is to be able to share documents and document content from Synergy. This integration is easily leveraged to verify accuracy in documents filed into Synergy. The start of this process can be automated to the point that when a new document is filed, Synergy can consider specific criteria on the document and begin a specific workflow definition automatically with the document attached to the workflow instance. The purpose behind this definition would be to perform various QC tasks to verify that the document is complete and accurate. Task Assignment The simple work effort of handing individuals specific tasks in an automated and balanced manner can speak greatly to the institution s overall efficiencies. Built into jhaenterprise Workflow is a load balancing assignment engine that automatically assigns activities to workers who are available and not preoccupied with already assigned activities. These activities and tasks are defined by the author who creates the definition. Also built into these activities is the ability to automatically send s based on criteria within the definition. One example would be a management escalation should a predefined event timer expire if an activity is not completed within a given time.

5 EWF Key Benefits Own and standardize business processes and procedures to enhance customer service and improve response times Streamline information access and distribution Improve operating efficiencies while reducing costs Distribute work automatically while ensuring accountability and measurement of tasks Support for linear and/or parallel work processing steps Have one location to present what happened and who did it for auditing purposes

6 Product Integration Strategies The differentiating factor for the jhaenterprise Workflow solution is integration. Because jhaenterprise Workflow is implemented as a true BPM solution with the intent of managing the Jack Henry applications and processes the product already has an integration edge on competitors. The overall integration vision for this product is to present one automated solution as a process, to all users at an institution. The following two touch points present the first phase in jhaenterprise Workflow s integration strategy. However, third party access, via web service calls, secured database access, or other standard practices is very important to the product group and is recognized as desired functionality for the product. jxchange s Service Gateway The Service Gateway product is Jack Henry & Associates standardized and secured integration strategy. There are currently over 150 application messages supported within the integration framework and more JHA products and services are coming in all of the time. The jhaenterprise Workflow product uses this integration touch point already as one of the mediums to communicate from/to Synergy and will soon be able to use all of the supported Service Gateway messages, opening the door to all of the JHA products. Xperience Message Bus jhaenteprise Workflow is one of the many products that run within JHA s Xperience framework UI solution. Built into the framework is an integration feature referred to as the Xperience Message Bus. This message bus allows two applications running within the framework to send application messages to each other in a standard manner. For example, the Synergy ECM product can request jhaenteprise Workflow to start a workflow instance and pass in an attachment reference id to run with the workflow instance. There are several integration touch points already implemented for jhaenterprise Workflow, and even more to come!