EPCOR Utilities Inc.
EPCOR Powers Better Efficiency and Workflow with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007
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Company Overview
With headquarters in Edmonton, Alberta, EPCOR Utilities Inc. builds, owns and operates power plants, electrical transmission and distribution networks, water and wastewater treatment facilities and infrastructure. With more than 40 offices staffed by more than 3,000 employees, the company operates in communities across Canada and the United States.
Business Challenge
Through growth and acquisitions, EPCOR has added 700 new employees. As EPCOR integrated new operations and personnel it became apparent that the process for ordering resources to help them settle into the organization could be made faster and uniform across business units – particularly for the Information Services (IS) department.
“Our people are our most important asset,” says Dallas Stoesz, Manager of Corporate Applications, EPCOR Utilities Inc. “Ensuring they have the tools they need to do their jobs effectively helps our company attract and retain the best employees.”
Under the old system a set of forms was used to order everything from an employee’s desktop computer to their login ID and telephone. Once a form was completed, the manager emailed, faxed or hand delivered the request to the administrative assistant who then coordinated the order. The form was then sent to a different set of managers for approvals. Since the process was split across manual and automated processes, EPCOR had no single way to maintain and monitor an audit trail, and tracking each process was time consuming and inefficient.
“Getting a new employee established at work, what we call ‘on-boarding’, was a painful and difficult process. We needed a clear workflow to guide the process,” says Stoesz. “We knew there had to be a better solution, one that empowered our IT team and increased productivity.”
Process wasn’t the only challenge. Forms were scattered across the EPCOR intranet site and different systems. In addition, although managers received a checklist of forms to fill in, it did not indicate the order to complete them, or what information was required, slowing the process further.
“Certain forms need to be filled out first to get the right resources in place, but people filled them in out of sequence, so our processes were thrown off. It was possible for a new hire to receive a username and password on their first day, but find that their computer needed to be ordered or delivered,” says Stoesz.
Permissions privileges were also a sensitive issue for new employees working for Information Services (IS). For example, a specific role such as a systems analyst should automatically receive a certain level of permissions – but this wasn’t the case. The IS department needed a way to automate and better manage this process to ensure better security over their information.
“When an IS employee starts at EPCOR, they might need administrative privileges on some servers, but only viewing privileges on others,” says Chris Pettican, E-Business Development Team Leader, EPCOR Utilities Inc. “Permissions management is a large process and is important from a controls perspective, so automating this process was a primary goal.”
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Solution
In 2006, EPCOR enlisted Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, Habañero Consulting Group, to upgrade to Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server 2007. In doing so, EPCOR brought all the pieces of the new hire process under one platform.
Office SharePoint Server 2007 is an integrated suite of server capabilities that can help improve organizational effectiveness by providing comprehensive content management and enterprise search, accelerating shared business processes, and facilitating information-sharing across boundaries for better business insight.
“Because of the complexity of its process for establishing new hires, the IS group intranet was the perfect starting point for our SharePoint Server 2007 deployment,” says Stoesz. “Seeing how well the process worked in this complicated area showed us how easily we could take it to the rest of the organization and generate more value from the products.”
According to Stoesz, the company had considered six or seven solutions before settling on the upgrade, but none could compete with SharePoint Server 2007 for ease of deployment, ease of use.
“We needed to inflict the least amount of pain on our users during the deployment,” adds Stoesz. “With SharePoint Server 2007, employees can securely fill in the forms anywhere they have access to the Internet.”
Using Microsoft Office InfoPath Forms Services in SharePoint Server 2007, EPCOR has created several server-based electronic form templates, which have helped standardize the forms and automate the process for establishing new employees. Microsoft Office Forms Server 2007 creates a streamlined, uncluttered workspace by providing a central repository for all forms, so that managers can quickly find the forms they need and get better results, faster.
“Forms Server 2007 made it extremely easy to create custom workflows, right out of the box,” says Stoesz. “We were able to develop an intuitive workflow for managers so that they would know exactly what they needed to do, at any point in the process.”
Business Benefits
SharePoint Server 2007 enabled EPCOR to automate the IS process for establishing new employees and streamline workflow with a standard platform and Web-rendered forms. Additionally, the system provides greater information insight by maintaining a workflow history so that managers and IT administrators can track items like permissions privileges, and keep a clear audit log for their records.
Improved efficiency
Previously, EPCOR used a number of systems to host different parts of the process for new employees, and managers entered the same information into multiple forms. By upgrading to SharePoint Server 2007, the company was able to consolidate these systems into one central location, enabling employees to find what they need easily.
In addition, Habañero integrated Microsoft Active Directory® directory service into Office InfoPath 2007, so that managers only need to enter the data once in the system to populate different forms. This has virtually eliminated the need for paper forms for this process at EPCOR.
“Office InfoPath 2007 makes it much easier for users to work with forms and share them with colleagues directly in SharePoint Server 2007,” says Rhonda Turner, Solution Specialist, Habañero Consulting Group. “It dramatically reduces the time and energy spent filling out duplicate documents and manually re-entering information into the system. We expect to see at least a 50 per cent time savings.”
Dramatic time savings
Since upgrading to SharePoint Server 2007, managers can take advantage of its review and approval workflow capabilities directly from applications in the 2007 Microsoft Office system, such as Microsoft Word. When forms are sent out, managers automatically receive an email message and a “task” in Microsoft Office Outlook® 2007 to notify them that their input or approval is needed. Once they have completed the form, managers can save the updates back in the document library for others to easily access.
“In the past, on-boarding took a week or more. With SharePoint Server 2007, that time has been cut to a couple of hours. As we find ways to further streamline the process, we expect to trim it down to 15 minutes. This gives employees more time to work on core business,” says Stoesz.
Better access to information
InfoPath Forms Services offers EPCOR strong support for its forms-based process for bringing new hires on board. With other forms servers, a client program must be loaded onto each desktop in order for users to access a form. Using SharePoint Server 2007, EPCOR was able to avoid this by converting Office InfoPath forms to Web-based forms, enabling employees to access resource order forms from their Web browser.
“As we deploy the 2007 Office system to the rest of the organization and provide all users with access to the tools in Office SharePoint 2007, we are starting to realize the huge potential for cost savings and efficiency gains,” says Stoesz. “The flexibility of the 2007 Office release allows us to easily customize the system to positively affect different areas of our business.”
Microsoft Office System
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For More Information
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For more information about Habañero Consulting Group products and services, call 1 (866) 841-6201 or visit the Web site at: www.habaneros.com
For more information about EPCOR Utilities Inc products and services, call (780) 412-3780 or visit the Web site at: www.epcor.ca
