Portal Strategy Delivers Rapid Returns for Print and Promotional Solution Provider

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1 Microsoft Office System Customer Solution Case Study Portal Strategy Delivers Rapid Returns for Print and Promotional Solution Provider Overview Country or Region: United States Industry: Professional services Customer Profile WorkflowOne is a full-service provider of print and promotional solutions. The company has approximately 3,000 employees and is based in Dayton, Ohio. Business Situation WorkflowOne wanted a comprehensive portal strategy to streamline workflow and better serve its customers, and needed to choose among Microsoft software, IBM WebSphere, and custom development using Java 2 Enterprise Edition. Solution WorkflowOne chose the Windows platform as the cornerstone of its portal strategy and, with help from consultant Composable Systems Inc. (CSI), is delivering new solutions at a rapid pace. Benefits Increased customer value Better employee productivity through improved workflow and information access Rapid time-to-market and low development costs Optimized use of IT resources We ve been able to very quickly set up new intranet and extranet portals, and just as rapidly start plugging in functionality to meet various business needs. Ian O Brien, Chief Technology Officer, WorkflowOne When WorkflowOne set out to implement a comprehensive portal strategy, the print and promotional solution provider evaluated Microsoft software, IBM WebSphere, and custom development using Java 2 Enterprise Edition. Seven months after choosing Microsoft software, the company has deployed several new intranet and extranet solutions that are delivering strong business value. Customers now have better access to data in WorkflowOne backend systems, such as order history and inventory levels, and soon will have the ability to manage their own marketing campaigns online. WorkflowOne employees are benefiting from streamlined internal processes and now can publish their own information to the rest of the company. By using Microsoft software, WorkflowOne is delivering those new capabilities both rapidly and cost effectively while making optimal use of its IT resources.

2 We chose Microsoft software over WebSphere and custom development using Java 2 Enterprise Edition because it offered lower costs and the ability to help us more rapidly meet business needs. Ian O Brien, Chief Technology Officer, WorkflowOne Situation WorkflowOne is one of the largest and fastest-growing providers of print and promotional solutions in the United States. The company s experience, technology, manufacturing capabilities, and global sourcing and distribution network enable WorkflowOne to deliver comprehensive supply chain solutions in the areas of commercial, digital, and on-demand printing; document management; promotional products and specialty cards; marketing and direct mail services; statement processing and billing; warehousing, packaging, fulfillment, and distribution; and related technology solutions. Today s WorkflowOne is the result of a November 2005 acquisition of Relizon by Workflow Management. Both companies have a long history of growth through acquisitions and adoption of new technologies to deliver increased customer value from producing some of the first carbon-paper form sets in the early 1930s to developing early Web-based tools for desktop document management in the mid-1990s. The goal of the acquisition was to take the best of both companies and build something better, combining strong internal manufacturing and distribution capabilities with a world-class network of certified trade partners to provide exceptional depth in sourcing and logistics, says Ian O Brien, Chief Technology Officer at WorkflowOne. To support that network, we've built and are continuing to evolve a robust and scalable technology platform that enables us to offer clients unparalleled levels of choice and flexibility. At the time of the acquisition, both companies had been working on a portal strategy to streamline workflow and provide customers with access to data in internal systems. However, the two companies had been using different technologies and were taking different approaches. Workflow Solutions, which used primarily Microsoft software, had a partially deployed intranet site and a few custom-developed extranet sites for larger clients based on the Windows Server 2003 operating system and Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003, with significant time invested yet lots more work to do. Relizon s chosen platform was Java and Oracle, and the company was in the process of implementing an Oracle enterprise resource planning (ERP) application, with plans to use a portal solution from Comergent. Before moving forward, the new WorkflowOne had to standardize on a single development platform for new solutions, with its new intranet and extranet portals at the top of the list. The company quickly dismissed the Oracle ERP approach, which had started to show some major problems. The Oracle data model didn t support the business very well, meaning that it would have taken a lot of work to do even basic things like nested catalogs, says O Brien. Financials had gone well under Oracle ERP, but an ERP-based approach started to fall down during the order-to-cash process. WorkflowOne decided it needed a more flexible architecture. We saw that a distributed approach would be better than a centralized ERP-based approach from many perspectives, a key one being the ability to remain more customer focused, says O Brien. We need to mix and match the capabilities of our core business systems and extend that functionality to customers in terms of their own business. After deciding on a distributed approach, we narrowed our options to Microsoft software, IBM WebSphere, and custom development using Java 2 Enterprise Edition.

3 With Microsoft.NET software, we get a set of common, preestablished hooks across all Microsoft products, which allows us to easily combine those various products into flexible distributed solutions. Ian O Brien, Chief Technology Officer, WorkflowOne Solution After evaluation, WorkflowOne selected Microsoft software as its technology platform for future projects, starting with its new portal strategy. We chose Microsoft software over WebSphere and custom development using Java 2 Enterprise Edition because it offered lower costs and the ability to help us more rapidly meet business needs, says O Brien. We prefer to buy versus build whenever possible, and the extensive prebuilt functionality of the Windows platform supports that model very well. With Microsoft.NET software, we get a set of common, preestablished hooks across all Microsoft products, which allows us to easily combine those various products into flexible distributed solutions. Adds Jeff Noffsinger, Director of Solutions Development at WorkflowOne, Microsoft understands business documents and how people collaborate on them, and Microsoft software enables us to capture, manage, and move information in a document-centric manner that supports both our internal processes and how we interact with customers and suppliers. At the core of the new WorkflowOne intranet and extranet portals is Microsoft Office SharePoint Server We were content with SharePoint Portal Server 2003 until we saw what SharePoint Server 2007 had to offer, and started developing on it as soon as we could get our hands on it, says Noffsinger. We knew that doing so would give us a clear, multiyear window for delivering new solutions that could help us gain a competitive advantage. WorkflowOne enlisted the aid of Tim Landgrave, Managing Partner of Composable Systems Inc., a business management and information technology consulting company that already had significant experience with Office SharePoint Server 2007 through its ongoing relationship with Microsoft. Bringing Tim into the picture helped both further accelerate solution delivery and mitigate risk, says O Brien. We have a very healthy respect for Tim and his relationship with Microsoft. He s tied in enough with Microsoft to get us answers when we need them, yet at the same time he s independent enough to give us his own perspective on any issues. Company Intranet Since May 2006, WorkflowOne has deployed four solutions based on Office SharePoint Server The first solution, developed with assistance from Lucrum, a Microsoft Certified Partner, consisted of migrating old, static Web pages from the former Workflow Solutions and Relizon intranet sites to a comprehensive new intranet portal. The new portal, which makes use of the Microsoft Office InfoPath 2003 information-gathering program, took two developers two months to build and went live in November Our goal was to use as much out-of-the-box SharePoint Server functionality as possible, and to turn the solution over to business users to manage on an ongoing basis, says Landgrave. The new intranet includes several automated workflows for process management, where we took documents that used to be printed and manually routed and converted them to InfoPath forms that drive automated workflows. The new intranet portal includes Web sites and collaboration workspaces for each department, which use the content management features of Office SharePoint Server 2007 to publish their own information. We built a hierarchy of sites under each department, using built-in features of SharePoint Server to support the publishing and approval process, says Landgrave. While most capabilities of the intranet portal are based on out-of-the-box SharePoint Server functionality, we did a little custom

4 Today, we can provision a custom portal that makes valuable capabilities available over the Web for any customer in a matter of hours. John Watkins, Manager of Customer Facing Solutions, WorkflowOne development for the workflows that move documents from the areas of a departmental site that are only visible to employees of that department to those areas that are visible to all company employees. Vendor Invoice Management On top of its new intranet, WorkflowOne used software from KnowledgeLake to build a comprehensive document scanning, indexing, and search solution for vendor invoices. As those invoices come in, they are scanned and links to the scanned documents are stored in the company s Oracle financial system, out of which such invoices are paid. The solution took one developer six weeks to build. Scanned documents such as vendor invoices can be stored anywhere on the intranet and found easily because of the Enterprise Search functionality in Office SharePoint Server 2007 and the fact that it is built on ASP.NET version 2.0. We configured a custom search scope in SharePoint Server and built an HTTP module that can be called by the Oracle financial solution, says Landgrave. The HTTP module allows any internal system not just Oracle to create a dynamic link to any scanned document on the intranet just by passing in the unique barcode ID for the document as a parameter. If the user has appropriate permissions, he or she can view the document. The solution links vendor invoices for work done on a client s behalf with the billing of that work to WorkflowOne clients, which is done on an IBM iseries midrange server computer. For any invoices that are out of tolerance (the invoiced amount varies from the amount billed to the client), line items that do not match are forwarded to Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006 business process management software, which kicks off a workflow running on SharePoint Server that looks up the account manager for the client and sends that person an notification of the discrepancy with a link to the scanned vendor invoice. Customer Extranet The company s third project based on Office SharePoint Server 2007 was an automated provisioning system that allows WorkflowOne to rapidly create and easily manage customer-specific extranet portals. The portals allow customers to enter, track, and view orders, as well as collaborate on the creation of new projects. The solution relies on the forms-based authentication provided in Office SharePoint Server 2007 along with an internally developed credential management system to offload most work required to support the customer portals to business users rather than burdening the company s IT department. The solution took four developers five months to build. On the portal, customers can view messages and announcements, order existing products using a shopping cart model, and source and quote new items. SharePoint-based Web parts that run within the portal pages provide access to information such as invoices, shipments to date, and current inventory data that WorkflowOne made available by using BizTalk Server 2006 to tie the portal to the company s inventory and order processing applications. Single sign-on capabilities ensure that clients need only one password, and provisioning code written by WorkflowOne developers allows clients to manage their own users. Campaign Management WorkflowOne is developing a campaign management solution that will allow clients to easily create and manage custom marketing campaigns, such as selecting potential customers who are likely to consume their services and having printed coupons mailed to them to encourage business. In addition, the campaign management solution will allow customers to track the effectiveness of their

5 With our new intranet portal, we ve been able to make dozens of internal processes more efficient. Ian O Brien, Chief Technology Officer, WorkflowOne marketing campaigns and use that data to target future campaigns, such as identifying customers who responded to a past campaign and targeting them for a new one. While early efforts are targeted at the quick oil change business, the solution is flexible enough to be adapted to any industry with a need to create personalized marketing materials and target potential customers based on historical or other data. Development of the solution is expected to take five developers three months, and is scheduled to be completed in May Architecture and Technology All four solutions are hosted on Office SharePoint Server 2007, which runs on Windows Server The Microsoft SQL Server 2005 database system provides relational database and online analytical processing capabilities, and application integration is facilitated by BizTalk Server Microsoft Internet Security and Acceleration Server 2006 helps safeguard all customer-facing sites, and Office InfoPath 2007 was used to create the online forms that replace paper-based documents. The Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 development system provided a common tool set for all solution components. Benefits With its new portal solutions, WorkflowOne is delivering greater value to both external clients and internal users. The company s decision to use Microsoft software is enabling WorkflowOne to deliver new capabilities faster and at lower cost, with access to the skilled resources required to rapidly deliver the solutions needed to support new business needs and opportunities. We ve been able to very quickly set up new intranet and extranet portals, and just as rapidly start plugging in functionality to meet various business needs, says O Brien. Today we do more integration than custom development because we already have or can easily source most of the functionality that we need. Increased Customer Value WorkflowOne is rapidly delivering new value to clients, with a build-once, service-all approach instead of having to customdevelop new solutions for each client. In the past, we had built a few extranet portals for our larger clients, but each one was a custom development effort, says John Watkins, Manager of Customer Facing Solutions. Most clients had to send in orders using phone or fax, and call their account manager to check on their status. Today, we can provision a custom portal that makes valuable capabilities available over the Web for any customer in a matter of hours, Watkins continues. Out-of-the-box SharePoint Server features such as formsbased authentication and master pages and themes made it easy to build an extranet solution that we can use to better serve all our clients. The same holds true for the campaign management solution, which replaces a similar solution based on Adobe ColdFusion that was not flexible enough to be adapted to other markets. Many of our clients are moving to personalized, one-on-one marketing, says O Brien. It s a high-value area for customers, and thus a high-growth business for us. We re using Microsoft software to build a highly flexible campaign management solution that can easily be repurposed to serve almost any industry, with SharePoint Server providing the customer interface, BizTalk Server giving us a way to import data from customer point-of-sale systems and other data sources, and SQL Server supporting data management and analysis.

6 Projects that would have taken several months using Oracle and Java can be accomplished in a fraction of that time using Microsoft.NET. John Watkins, Manager of Customer Facing Solutions, WorkflowOne Improved Employee Productivity The company s new intranet is having a positive effect on internal workflow and employee productivity, as provided by the self-service content publishing and automated workflows built into the portal. Replacing our paper-based Network Access Request Form with an electronic equivalent based on InfoPath and SharePoint Server will reduce the time that it takes to process such requests from five to seven days to less than a day, says O Brien. With our new intranet portal, we ve been able to make dozens of internal processes more efficient. and extranet sites can be met with out-of-the box SharePoint Server features and, if they can t, we can usually find a prebuilt solution from a Microsoft partner to fill the gap. Optimized Use of IT Resources With its chosen technology platform, WorkflowOne is able to make more efficient use of its IT resources and easily augment those resources when needed. Having a common development tool and programming model for all aspects of solution development makes it much easier to allocate resources across projects, says Noffsinger. In the case of the company s new vendor invoice management solution, capabilities exposed through the intranet portal are enabling people to view information that they simply couldn t access before. In the past, no one person had access to all the information needed to address a discrepancy in a vendor invoice, says Noffsinger. We ve bridged that information gap and can now deliver all the data needed to resolve the issue to the account manager, who is responsible for the work contracted to external vendors on a client s behalf. And with the ability to scan vendor invoices, we no longer need to pay to archive boxes of paper each month. Rapid Time-to-Market and Low Development Costs The company s decision to standardize on Microsoft software is helping WorkflowOne deliver its new solutions more rapidly and at a lower cost than had it chosen a different option. Projects that would have taken several months using Oracle and Java can be accomplished in a fraction of that time using Microsoft.NET, says Watkins. The reason for that huge difference is that the Windows platform and SharePoint Server provide a wealth of prebuilt functionality that we would have had to develop on our own in the past. Most requirements we ve had for our intranet For example, I can assign a Web developer to integrate a report from SQL Server into a SharePoint-based Web part, while someone else can use the exact same tools to integrate two systems using BizTalk Server, he says. Even our Java developers have been able to come up to speed and start being productive in a matter of two to four weeks. And the same benefits hold true from a system administration perspective, in that all Microsoft software employs the same management model and tool set. In addition, when WorkflowOne has needed additional resources, the company has been able to easily find them. With the Windows platform, we don t need to look far for good local talent, and can be pretty confident that someone with experience in.net development will be able to join our team and be productive from the start. That kind of access to skilled resources helps us meet the demands and dates that we set forth, drawing on outside resources when the situation warrants it. Improved resource usage is just one more way that Microsoft software is helping us better meet the needs of the business and stay on top of new opportunities as they present themselves.

7 For More Information For more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) Customers who are deaf or hard-ofhearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) in the United States or (905) in Canada. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to: Microsoft Office System The Microsoft Office system is the business world s chosen environment for information work, providing the programs, servers, and services that help you succeed by transforming information into impact. For more information about the Microsoft Office system, go to: For more information about Composable Systems, visit the Web site at: For more information about WorkflowOne, visit the Web site at: Software and Services Microsoft Server Product Portfolio Windows Server 2003 Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006 Microsoft Internet Security and Acceleration Server 2006 Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Microsoft Office Microsoft Office InfoPath 2003 Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Hardware Egenera BladeFrame server computer Xiotech storage area network system This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY. Document published March 2007