How to reduce staff time spent on approving documents using a mobile application

Client

Major european property developer - 25 years on the market, more than 13,000 employees.

Client’s Problem

Сlient’s complex organizational structure slowed down the workflow. Contract approval chain averaged 15 stages. Due to cycles and iterations of coordination up to 50 people could easily be involved. Top and middle managers used four workflow systems at the same time. They received more than 100 coordination tasks per day and spent around 2 hours of personal time solving them daily and still couldn't cope with the amount of work.

Goal

• Speed up workflow without a fundamental restructuring of the company's business processes
• Reduce the time it takes to approve deals, budgets, accounts, applications and other documents that go through the approval process
• Simplify the work of company management
• Get tasks done in a short period of time

Solution

Analyzed the approval procedure and identified the main reason for the delays which was inconvenient combination of several workflow systems. Developed and implemented the “Unified Approval Account” in a form of a web interface and a mobile application.

What’s been done

• Developed the concept and architecture of the solution
• Developed mobile application for iOS and Android
• Created a SharePoint-based web application
• We set up automatic collection of tasks and related documents from various document management systems
• Provided automatic sending of approval results to document management systems
• Paid attention to security: we set up VPN and two-factor authentication

Result

We launched “Unified Approval Account” and presented the first version of the mobile application to the client two months after the start of development.

• Using an automated mobile workstation, the average term for agreement agreement was reduced from 2-3 weeks to several days
• Created a single access point to the processes of coordination of various electronic document management systems for more than 300 employees
• Provided an opportunity for 50 coordinators to work on one document simultaneously

Having completed development and testing, we’ve transferred the project to internal client’s support. They continue to use the single approval account for more than five years now.