How LSTM replaced paper and inspired collaboration with workflow automation

Georgina (PEX Network)00:03

Good morning, good afternoon and good evening, wherever you're joining us from, and welcome to this PEX Network workflow automation webinar. I'm Georgina, and I'll be moderating today's session, which will be given by Shay O'Connor and Paul Stone from FlowForma. If you have questions for the presenters, submit them in the Q&A box on your screen. They'll be answered as we go or in the Q&A session after the presentation. Do take a look at the resources box too, and resize or move the windows to suit your screen.

Georgina (PEX Network)01:22

It's my great pleasure to hand over to our presenters, Paul Stone and Shay O'Connor. Gentlemen, welcome. I'll hand over to Shay.

Shay O'Connor01:43

Thank you, Georgina, and welcome, everybody. Today's topic is dear to our hearts: a case study from the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. A lot of organizations are contemplating or have started digitally transforming their manual processes. LSTM is about four years into this project, and it's a great example of what to do if you want to digitize your environment. Paul has had an in-depth association with LSTM and will give us the background. Paul, can you tell us about the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine first?

Paul Stone03:00

The Liverpool School was formed in 1898, at the end of the Industrial Revolution, when Liverpool was a distribution hub shipping produce to all four corners of the world. A philanthropist decided a lot could be done to fight tropical diseases, and he formed the school. Today it's a leading force in tropical disease control, with international research programs, and it's the leading research center on snake venom antidotes. Its staff often work in very difficult conditions, going out to tropical locations as disease outbreaks occur. It's also a teaching institution with over 600 students, so there's a large administrative function inside that academic body.

Shay O'Connor04:24

In 1898 they weren't looking at digital processes, I'd imagine. So what motivated them to start automating their workflows?

Paul Stone04:38

As with many academic institutions, they were a little behind the times. Their processes were based on paper forms and lots of email chains, all tracked on spreadsheets, so there was a real opportunity for digital forms and automation. There weren't many controls in place either. The process was defined on paper, but nobody could easily tell where a process was at any point in time, or who had the email chain. That's a big exposure to risk, because if you're not monitoring and controlling a process, it has limited value and you're exposed to operational risk. They also had limited internal resources, so they wanted a way of creating digital processes that wouldn't depend on IT or expensive external suppliers.

Shay O'Connor06:08

If they'd looked at this six years before, it would have been completely different. With limited resources, you can't go down the coding route.

Paul Stone06:32

That's right. The tools didn't exist then. Six or seven years ago, electronic forms and workflow tools needed experienced, highly skilled IT resources to implement. LSTM had an IT department, but not the specialist skills you'd need to build solutions with the BPM tools of the time, so they'd have depended on expensive external suppliers.

Shay O'Connor07:04

We have a couple of poll questions in this webinar, and the first is coming up now: what challenges do you face with workflow? Different organizations come across different challenges, and they change over time as people get used to digital automation. Quite often it's something as simple as getting sign-off and support from the hierarchy. If you don't get that support, digital forms won't work for you.

Shay O'Connor08:24

Here are the results, and there's a tie between not being able to automate workflows with speed and workflow integrations, with poor workflow visibility also important.

Paul Stone08:41

Speed is the interesting one. People often know what they want to do, but they run into roadblocks when they try to automate. One of the great things about the Liverpool School is that they got up and running very quickly, and that ability to build momentum is what lets you automate at scale. If you bring in something new like digital forms and don't see results fast, it gets frustrating.

Shay O'Connor09:40

LSTM obviously had a motivation to look for a tool, and then set some criteria for selecting one. Can you go through them, Paul?

Paul Stone09:55

LSTM were early adopters of Office 365, which brought in SharePoint Online and other components, and they wanted to maximize that investment and take it to the next level: from personal productivity to productivity across the entire organization. Next was ease of implementation. Instead of a complex BPM platform that needed specialist external resources, they wanted something they could configure themselves, quickly, to get a return on investment as soon as possible. They wanted to integrate with existing systems, both SharePoint and external systems, which aligns well with the poll results. And the last piece was usability. Academics and people without strong IT skills needed to pick the system up and run with it, in the office, off site, and in the field, which for LSTM meant tropical locations around the world.

Shay O'Connor12:02

And all of that helps adoption. If a new way of doing things is easy to use, people adapt to it more easily.

Paul Stone12:19

Adoption is the ultimate goal, because if people aren't using the system you're not getting the return. It's more critical than people ever realize.

Shay O'Connor12:36

So they went through their requirements and chose FlowForma. Can you go through some of their use cases?

Paul Stone12:57

The first one they implemented was a travel assessment. Everyone's used to a travel approval workflow, but this is approval on steroids. At the Liverpool School it means making sure a doctor going to a very remote tropical location will be safe. It involves internal approvals all the way up to the CEO, and arranging services with external suppliers of emergency aid, for example. It's a big, complex workflow, and they got to grips with it very quickly, in a couple of months. It made a real difference to the CEO, who was very worried about risk in this area. With the paper process, people had to get on a plane fast to deal with an outbreak, and unless the system was slick and efficient, the process wasn't completed. That was a big operational risk.

Shay O'Connor14:27

And trying to do that on paper, it's so open to mistakes.

Paul Stone14:51

They didn't stop there. For that first process they got some training, and part of it was built by external resources. Once they were trained up, they started building solutions themselves.

Shay O'Connor15:14

That was part of their criteria, wasn't it? They didn't want to be handed a fish, they wanted to learn how to fish, and to own it fully themselves, not just the IT department.

Paul Stone15:37

That was stage two of their evolution with FlowForma. They trained people in the finance department to build their own solutions, and the finance department went on to digitize 50 processes themselves over the four years.

Shay O'Connor15:59

And even though the first process is core to what they do, the others are universal. They have nothing to do with tropical medicine. It's just the running of the business.

Paul Stone16:17

Absolutely. New supplier processes, for example, are standard everywhere, though each organization has its own variations. There were specific ones too, like the delegated authority process, which was quite complex and had lots of configuration points specific to LSTM. They digitized all of these themselves, the processes have worked successfully since, and they've gradually refined them over time.

Shay O'Connor17:04

Because they're in control of creating their own processes, with no code and no scripting, they can be more agile and make changes as users give feedback.

Paul Stone17:29

The whole idea with FlowForma is that you build a prototype, even if you don't know the process exactly, and with the Liverpool School that was often the case. You put it in front of end users, they tell you it doesn't quite work like that, and you change it quickly and get it back out to them. Being responsive to their needs really helps with adoption, and with trust.

Shay O'Connor18:19

They're four years down the track, and a lot of organizations will be envious of that. What does success look like to them?

Paul Stone18:53

They've automated over 120 workflows in that time, and when you consider that those 120 processes started off as pieces of paper and email chains, that's really significant. They did it by setting up a center of excellence: named FlowForma experts inside the school, not necessarily in IT, with people in the finance department and elsewhere. Those experts meet end users regularly, take their suggestions and implement them as digital processes. With that and an internal training program, they've built a culture of continuous improvement. People know they can use FlowForma to digitize a process, and they go to a process expert to find out how.

Shay O'Connor20:14

That change of mentality is really important. It's not a case of asking why you'd digitize something. Digitizing is the first port of call. You don't even start with a sheet of paper anymore.

Paul Stone20:46

You're absolutely right. In the old days you'd put a form together in Microsoft Word with instructions on how it should be processed. That's no longer the starting point. You talk to a process expert, get a prototype out there, and get it into production as quickly as possible.

Shay O'Connor21:10

It's primarily an educational institution, so budgets are tight. The fact that they could create unlimited workflows with FlowForma without any change in price was massive, because there were no surprises. And if the first, the travel assessment, took a couple of months, you're talking about nearly three live processes a month since then.

Paul Stone21:56

The first one is always the hardest, because you're getting used to a new tool and a new way of doing things. Once the culture is established, some training has been done and there's a body of process experts in the organization, things really take off. And they don't need to be Lean Black Belts. If you can understand and document a process, you know enough to digitize it in FlowForma. Getting the snowball rolling is the hardest part, but once you get over that hump you can really accelerate, and that's why they have 120 automated workflows over four years.

Shay O'Connor23:04

There's another poll question at this stage: what will success look like for your organization? Increased efficiency and productivity, a culture of continuous process improvement across the business, bottlenecks found quicker, or improved cross-department engagement and communication. You can select more than one. A lot of organizations have trouble identifying bottlenecks, and with an agile system you can adapt quickly when you find them. People also find that digitization improves their data, so you can report on it.

Shay O'Connor24:32

The results: increased efficiency and productivity is first, with improved cross-department engagement and communication a close second. Paul, does that surprise you?

Paul Stone24:47

Not at all. Everybody strives for efficiency, because you become more productive, get a return on your investment and become more competitive. A digital system tracks everything, so you know how long things take, where the pain points are and how resources are being used, and you can adjust. It's interesting that a culture of continuous improvement is high on the list too.

Shay O'Connor26:07

Organizations often think they know their process because it's been the same for ten years. When you digitize, you're in a position to adjust it to suit the times.

Shay O'Connor26:22

One more question about LSTM. They've really knocked it out of the park, so what's next for them?

Paul Stone26:47

They're streamlining processes that have been live for many years. Over that time the business environment, the organizational structure, the resources and the suppliers have all changed, so you need to keep reviewing your processes. I was speaking to one of their leading people in the finance department, who said that three steps in one of their processes could now be combined into one, because the people in the department have changed and one person now does all three. They made that change quickly and easily. The other piece is reporting. All the data from those processes is captured automatically, so they want to use it in up-to-the-minute dashboards showing the status of every process.

Shay O'Connor28:50

Some of the audience may not know the difference between a no-code and a low-code environment. Could you take a few minutes to show an example?

Paul Stone29:28

This is a purchase requisition, from the end user's view. The step bar across the top shows all the steps in the process and where you are right now, so a business user can understand it very quickly. Below that is the data for this step. It can be typed in or populated automatically: when I select a different supplier, it pre-populates all the supplier data from a back-end system, such as an accounting system. Business rules can also vary the workflow route based on the data. Here, a grand total between 2,500 and 25,000 means you need level one and level two approval.

Paul Stone31:02

Here's the same workflow in our configuration tool, with all the steps, the data within them and the rules that fire on that data. I'll add an IT approval step that only shows if IT goods are being purchased, drag it up to second place, and add a question: do you approve this request? The whole system is no-code and forms-driven. You fill in a form, that defines the logical workflow, and the system builds the form and displays it automatically. The next time you run the process, you'll see the new step. You can assign steps to people, send emails, pull information from back-end systems and change which steps appear based on approvals.

Shay O'Connor33:32

It's not a canvas system, so you don't create separate workflows and forms and tie them together. Anyone who can document a process can put the same information into the Flow Designer and end up with a working process and all its forms.

Paul Stone33:55

It's just a question of filling in blanks. Save it, launch the process again, and the new step appears immediately.

Paul Stone34:12

FlowForma Process Automation combines data, workflow steps and documents. It sits on top of SharePoint, so all the data is saved in your own SharePoint tenancy, and you can generate documents as you move through the workflow. It's won awards, it's in use by over 300,000 users, and it's not just for academic institutions. Clients include Aon and Marsh & McLennan in insurance, and major construction projects such as Inland Rail and the A14.

Georgina (PEX Network)35:23

Thank you both. That was really interesting, with a lot of variety. Questions have already started coming through.

Georgina (PEX Network)35:55

Are there any prerequisites for using FlowForma as an automation tool, or can you just pick it up and run with it?

Paul Stone36:12

The prerequisites are very low. The only one is SharePoint Online. FlowForma installs on SharePoint Online and saves all its data there, including the workflow data, forms and documents, in your own tenancy. SharePoint Online comes as standard with many Office 365 plans, so if you have Office 365, chances are you have everything you need.

Georgina (PEX Network)36:45

How soon can organizations see a return from a tool like FlowForma?

Shay O'Connor37:01

The first process is always the slowest, because you're learning how to create things as well as creating the process. But once it goes live, you start getting a return on time straight away. There are intangible savings before that, too. If it takes four weeks to get the first process running in FlowForma, it might take three months or more on a platform that needs some coding, because of the changes, acceptance and coordination between groups. Once the process is live, you're saving time and effort within a couple of months.

Georgina (PEX Network)38:16

Does FlowForma really mean no-code?

Shay O'Connor38:24

That question comes up a lot, because other platforms describe themselves as low-code or no-code. In reality, once a process goes past two steps, other platforms need coding. In FlowForma, however complex the process, you put in your steps, your data and your rules without any code. That's why the Liverpool School, which has no programmers, could have business users create all of these processes. They didn't have to learn a new language or any scripting. You only realize it's truly no-code when you use it, and you can download a trial in 20 minutes and try it.

Georgina (PEX Network)39:44

What are FlowForma's integration capabilities with other systems?

Paul Stone40:01

FlowForma sits on top of SharePoint and integrates natively, so pushing and pulling information to SharePoint lists and document libraries is no problem. Beyond that, we have no-code connectors and business rules for systems such as SQL Server. We also integrate with Microsoft Logic Apps, which lets you move information between FlowForma and over 200 applications. And customers integrate with on-premises systems too, with FlowForma running on SharePoint in the cloud and talking to an on-premises back end.

Georgina (PEX Network)41:17

You mentioned a center of excellence. Who in the business normally sponsors and manages that group?

Paul Stone41:25

It often starts with someone in IT and moves into the business. Take a hospital with 3,000 staff: it started FlowForma in the IT department, soon involved business users in building flows, just as LSTM did with finance, and then formed a center of excellence of IT and business people, led by the business. That's happened on more than one occasion. There isn't a typical business leader. The people who configure FlowForma just need to understand and document a process, and I don't mean BPMN diagrams, just a written description. The people who lead it are champions who understand the benefits and the needs, and usually have a network inside the organization. It's an easy sell, because you can measure the results very quickly.

Georgina (PEX Network)43:40

Are there ever problems when a process owner moves on? Can the people remaining support a process someone else set up, or should there be central governance?

Paul Stone44:01

Institutions tackle that differently, but the larger ones keep one SharePoint area with a central, documented master copy of all their processes, which is then distributed to other departments. Combined with a center of excellence of two or more people, that means the organization isn't dependent on any one person, and the knowledge is retained as people change. That's the approach at LSTM, for example.

Georgina (PEX Network)45:16

We have time for one more. How soon can this person expect ROI from a tool like FlowForma?

Shay O'Connor45:24

Anyone introducing FlowForma will be asked when it will have an impact. The truth is that as soon as the first process is running, you make a return, because your time and efficiency improve automatically. A good example is another education institution, Abingdon & Witney College. They digitized six processes and saved over 5,000 hours with those first six, the equivalent of two and a half staff. They didn't let anybody go. They got that much extra work done.

Georgina (PEX Network)46:48

As we draw to a close, is there a right time to go for workflow automation?

Shay O'Connor47:04

I often ask people whether they can imagine still doing manual processes in five years' time. Everybody says no. So if the tools are ready now, why not do it now? Four years after they started, LSTM have over 120 processes, and they say they have a paperless finance department. That's the first time I've heard anybody say that. They started with one process and kept moving. You don't need to invest heavily or build big infrastructure, because you already have Office 365. If you know your process, you could have it up within a couple of days, and we've had customers convert a simple paper form at lunchtime.

Shay O'Connor49:12

We'd never advocate digitizing a process you don't know. If you have a broken process, software won't fix it. But once you know your process and digitize it, you get far more visibility and control, an impact you can report on, and a return on investment. As an analyst once told us, if you've got paper in a process in this day and age, the process is potentially broken already.

Georgina (PEX Network)50:17

That's a very good place to draw to a close. Thank you both, and thank you all for joining us. Don't forget to check out the resources box, and we hope to see you again soon.