Case Study
North American Development Bank
Key Business Challenge
The North American Development Bank (NADB) had a need for an online portal through which NADB employees could fill out and submit travel request forms, thereby eliminating the overhead associated with the creation and maintenance of hard-copy documentation and streamlining frequently used travel processes.
Background
Headquartered in San Antonio, Texas, NADB is an organization funded by both the United States and Mexico that exists to finance environmental projects along their shared border. Due to the company's dual-location nature, travel is an integral part of NADB daily operations. The processes in place for requesting travel were time-consuming and inefficient, leading NADB management to seek a more effective solution.
Denim Group Solution
Utilizing Windows SharePoint Services (WSS), Microsoft InfoPath, and a third-party WSS workflow application, Denim Group built a portal for NADB employees to create travel requests. Denim Group acquired a clear understanding of the company's workflow processes through information gathering sessions, which, in turn, helped in the technology selection process. Denim Group used InfoPath to create the travel request forms, allowing for dynamic submission of travel requests, as well as out-of-the-box validation and data binding, which proved critical for travel request accuracy. SmartLibrary, a third-party SharePoint workflow solution created by Nintex of Australia, proved to be a low-cost solution that successfully fulfilled NADB's unique workflow routing requirements. In addition, WSS perfectly complemented InfoPath and SmartLibrary, with its tight integration of the Office platform and third-party extensibility, creating a NADB intranet portal that can be extended to perform other NADB-specifi functions in the future.
ROI Value Statement
With the ability to quickly process travel request forms, NADB anticipates reducing the time and expense associated with this common process by 50%. The methods used to implement this added efficiency will also serve NADB well going forward, with future processes able to be smoothly integrated into this robust and flexible platform.