Automation

Typical Client Requirements
Automating management and staff workflow tasks is increasingly necessary to remain competitive in the marketplace. There are many things that can be automated in many different ways. We have a batch job engine that can send custom emails to dynamically defined audiences to remind clients of unpaid invoices or to inform qualifying vendors that they'll be receiving a MISC 1099 before the end of January. This engine also handles our dynamic documents. We also synchronize our production system with our accounting system to avoid redundant data entry tasks and to have easy access to summary balances for vendors and customers. We also have a module that can manage production workflow. If there are a semi-structured series of staff tasks and it is necessary to balance work in progress at each production step with available staff time, this can guide the way. It supports various types of exception handling, and audits everything including optional billing time for customers.

Solution Scenarios
The notion of automation is so general that there are many ways to provide solutions. Sometimes it is a new application, but other times it is simply a "utility" report that acts on data before then providing a summary of outcomes. Automation can also mean building an extranet or intranet to facilitate self-service, unburdening staff. We have a contact management module I call campaigning that lets me define a dynamic target group and to go into a mode where the system takes me to the next contact to process, allows regular system use while inside the contact, prompts for outcomes when closing the contact, and then automatically proceeds to the next contact. Our scheduling system has what I call a Rules Engine. When a customer makes an online reservation request, the request is tested againt that project's rule set to both calculate what the resulting "cost" would be and then to determine whether that particular request is consistent with all the permission rules in effect for that project. It logs outcomes, denials and changes.