BOWEN Workforce Solutions Inc.
BOWEN Employs Microsoft BizTalk Server to Connect Critical Applications
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Company Overview
For Jeffrey Bowen, working as director of information services at his family’s business is a big responsibility. Since the company started more than 30 years ago, BOWEN has grown rapidly and developed a reputation for sourcing high-quality permanent and non-permanent staff, and providing workforce training and human resources services for companies across Western Canada.
Business Challenge
Bowen manages the momentous task of employing IT solutions throughout the organization to keep costs downs, improve operational efficiency, and provide top-notch customer service. Substantial growth meant BOWEN was struggling with a legacy IT system unable to keep pace with more users and applications. The system consisted of accounting and payroll applications connected to a custom-designed database platform, which stored critical client and staffing information.
“Our legacy system had far exceeded its lifecycle,” says Bowen. “We were finding more and more data corruption errors as the system became taxed from overuse.”
The outdated system also required time-consuming manual re-entry of data. Each week, BOWEN staff spent hours re-keying timesheet data for 1,700 employees into the accounting and payroll applications. The company realized the inefficient manual entry process would not support its aggressive growth targets.
“The legacy system made it impossible for our financial services team to take on additional clients,” says Anna Nelson, vice president, financial services, BOWEN. “We needed a system that would automate the data entry process and free our financial services team to focus on more critical tasks.”
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Solution
BOWEN began working with Corrigo Solutions, a professional services company that provides complete solutions for system and application implementations and integrations, to replace its outdated system with more flexible applications to increase operational efficiency at the company. The upgrade included implementing Microsoft® Business Solutions-Great Plains® for accounting and invoicing, and HireDesk, an HR application based on the Microsoft .NET Framework.
“Microsoft Business Solutions-Great Plains provided accounting functionality far beyond the scope of the legacy system,” says Kelly Hawrysh, project manager, Corrigo Solutions. “Coupled with HireDesk, we knew the two solutions would help BOWEN service its clients far more efficiently than previously possible.”
HireDesk stores candidate and client information, including skill sets, placement history for both the candidate and client, payment and bill rates, client contacts and job orders. HireDesk also includes a component that allows on-line time sheet entry.
Once it had implemented Microsoft Business Solutions-Great Plains and HireDesk, the company still needed a system to enable data exchange between the two applications. After looking at competitive solutions, BOWEN chose Microsoft BizTalk® Server 2004 for its affordability and flexibility in scaling to accommodate future company growth.
“The only way we can be profitable in our current market space is to keep overhead costs down through innovative solutions like Microsoft BizTalk Server,” says Bowen. “Without the Microsoft solution, we would have been forced to hire additional staff to manage the increased business volume.”
BizTalk Server 2004 helps businesses integrate internal and external systems to automate business processes. Deploying the solution helps increase employee productivity, and helps reduce human error by eliminating unnecessary manual data entry.
BRIDGEWERX
To implement BizTalk Server as quickly and efficiently as possible, BOWEN sought the help of Microsoft Certified Partner 5by5 Software Ventures. Specializing in BizTalk Server implementations, 5by5 has developed a software tool called BRIDGEWERX that automates the deployment of BizTalk and helps reduce the complexity and costs. BRIDGEWERX eliminates the need for complex programming and its graphical interface helps make using BizTalk less code-intensive and much more efficient.
“For companies like BOWEN and other small-to-medium sized businesses, the combination of BRIDGEWERX and BizTalk allows them to rapidly deploy the integration solution that best fits their needs,” says Bob Tretiak, CEO and chairman, 5by5 Software Ventures.
Business Benefits
For owner-managed businesses like BOWEN, it is essential that IT investments provide substantial return. Deploying BizTalk Server has helped BOWEN realize the full benefits of its HireDesk and Microsoft Business Solutions-Great Plains deployments.
“Using BizTalk Server to integrate HireDesk and Microsoft Business Solutions-Great Plains allows us to run technology at a level that rivals our larger competitors,” says Bowen. “As our marketplace is becoming more global, this type of IT capability is critical to our success and continued growth.”
BizTalk Server 2004 is also helping BOWEN increase staff efficiency and improve the company’s overall growth potential.
Increased staff efficiency
Before overhauling its IT environment, BOWEN staff had to manually transfer data into the company’s accounting and payroll systems. Besides costing the company in employee hours, the manual process was a duplication of effort and often resulted in substantial review of data entry functions. The legacy system also limited BOWEN’s ability to grow by restricting the volume of data it could process in time to meet client and banking deadlines.
“BizTalk allows us to manage an increased volume as we grow, without the need to hire additional internal resources,” says Bowen. “Automating data transfer between these two critical applications will continue to improve our bottom line as we grow in the future.”
Using BizTalk to automate data transfer between Microsoft Business Solutions-Great Plains and HireDesk has eliminated manual steps needed to share information between applications, resulting in improved staff efficiency that helps save the company money.
“The new solution has enabled our financial services team to handle a far greater volume, without adding new members to the team,” says Nelson. “The increased efficiency is helping us save on staffing costs while positioning us for future growth.”
Improved growth potential
To speed the ordering and invoicing process, many large organizations now require trading partners to comply with internal e-business systems. With BizTalk’s ability to integrate with a range of e-business systems, including popular EDI formats, BOWEN has an affordable method of meeting compliance requirements of future clients.
“We have had proposals in the last couple of months where EDI has been a requirement,” says Bowen. “With the BizTalk implementation, we will be one of the few vendors our size that will be able to comply, which really gives us a leg up as EDI becomes more mainstream in our industry.”
Microsoft Windows Server System
Microsoft® Windows Server System is a comprehensive, integrated, and interoperable server infrastructure that helps reduce the complexity and costs of building, deploying, connecting, and operating agile business solutions. Windows Server System helps customers create new value for their business through the strategic use of their IT assets. With the Windows Server operating system as its foundation, Windows Server System delivers dependable infrastructure for data management and analysis; enterprise integration; customer, partner, and employee portals; business process automation; communications and collaboration; and core IT operations including security, deployment, and systems management.
For more information about Windows Server System, go to: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem
For More Information
For more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234 in the United States or (905) 568-9641 in Canada. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to: www.microsoft.com
For more information about 5by5 Software Ventures Ltd., call (403) 290-1406, or visit the Web site at: www.bridgewerx.com
For more information about Corrigo Solutions Inc., call (403) 257-5472, or the Web site at: visit www.corrigo.ca
For more information about BOWEN Workforce Solutions products and services, call (403) 262-1156 or visit the Web site at: www.bowenworks.ca
