Enabling Complex Workflows with Office 2.0
Sunday, October 1st 2006 | Ismael Ghalimi
A good workflow process is one that end-users will want to follow, thanks to a user interface that makes them more productive, while inducing minimal cognitive friction. Translation: Keep It Simple, Stupid! No online service demonstrates this KISS principle better than EchoSign today. I have written about this online document signing service in the past. At the time, I explained what I liked about the service’s architecture, but I had yet to use it for any real application. I am a strong believer in the eat-your-own-dog-food philosophy, and I have used EchoSign as part of our setup for organizing the Office 2.0 Conference. Here is what I learned along the way, followed by some ideas for enabling complex workflows with Office 2.0.
First of all, EchoSign works. It should not really come as a surprise, for many large corporations are getting things done by using it today, but it’s always good to know. We used EchoSign to get all sponsorship agreements signed, and we got 40 signed this way. For 30 of them (75%), it tooks less than a day to collect electronic signatures for both parties. And for more than half, it took no more than 3 hours. If you know any more efficient way of getting a contract signed, please let me know. And if you do not, you might want to give EchoSign a try.
What makes EchoSign work is the simplicity of its user workflow. To get an agreement signed, we wrote it with Zoho Writer, exported the agreement as a PDF document, created a new document in EchoSign by entering the sponsor’s email address, uploaded the agreement, and requested double signature — the sponsor’s first, ours second. Using Zoho Writer’s support for templates, getting a new agreement submitted to a sponsor would usually take less than five minutes, essentially the time it takes to harvest the sponsor’s physical address from the sponsor’s website. Then, the sponsor would receive a simple email, click on a link, review the agreement, enter her initials, and click on the “Approve” button. This would in turn lead the system to require our own signature, which would be provided in a similar fashion, at which point the agreement would have been signed by both parties and archived by EchoSign. As I told you, they kept it simple, and that’s why it’s working so well.
Now, this describes an ideal scenario, but the world we live in, or at least the world I live in, is far from being perfect, and sometime things break. For example a sponsor might require two free passes instead of one, and we would have to reflect that in the agreement — note to sponsors: we did it only once, so please don’t ask for more free passes. Or we would make an error in the sponsor’s address. Or in some cases the sponsor would realize that Gold sponsorship would actually make more sense than just Silver — note to sponsors: it’s not too late to upgrade. In such cases, we would simply cancel the process from EchoSign, and submit a revised agreement. The sponsor would receive a couple emails, one telling her that the original agreement has been cancelled, and another requesting her signature on the new agreement. Of course, it would have been even better if EchoSign had supported the modification of documents waiting for signature, so I explained this requirement to my good friend Jason Lemkin, one of EchoSign’s co-founders. I got the answer I was expecting: “it’s coming in the new release, and we might even show it at the Conference.” Awesome!
So we’ve demonstrated that EchoSign works for a workflow involving a single document. But what happens when you need more than one document? Well, we got to experience this first-hand with our little project, and here is what we learned in the process. In some instances, sponsors would request an invoice from us before they could send us the check for their sponsorship fee. And when the sponsor would be a public company, or one planning for an IPO, they would require us to send them a W-9 form before they could even sign the sponsorship agreement. At this point, the overall workflow involved three documents, two business rules, one single signature, and one double signature. Not the most complex workflow process I’ve seen, but certainly more complex than what Microsoft Outlook can handle out of the box.
EchoSign does not currently support this type of workflow, so we had to enable it manually, but I can already see two ways of addressing the problem. First, EchoSign is investing heavily in extending the capabilities of its existing service, and I would not be surprised if parts of the scenario described above are supported by the end of the year. Second, this scenario is exactly the kind of application that one could build with the upcoming Coghead service developed by my friend Greg Olsen. I wrote about it back in March, and a little bird is telling me that the good folks at Coghead are getting really close to making their first public release. Once they do, I’ll make sure to give it a try and see if I could use it to automate our agreement signing process a step further.
Now, this would only address a fragment of the overall lead-to-cash process I would like to automate, namely the signing part. Ideally, I would like the overall process to be automated, and all the services involved to be integrated in a seamless fashion. The process starts with a prospective sponsor registering to our website, which was built using the excellent SiteKreator. The registration form is served by Zoho Creator. Once a potential sponsor is registered, a new lead is created in SugarCRM. This is done manually today, but we’re only days away from getting it done automatically. Once a lead has been created, we need to engage in an email and phone discussion in order to define the most appropriate class of sponsorship. Here, nothing beats the human touch, but SugarCRM does a great job at capturing the email discussion thread. Once an agreement has been reached, we must draft the sponsorship agreement and get it electronically signed. Two integration points are required there: one between SugarCRM and Zoho Writer, and another between Zoho Writer and EchoSign. The former is in the works, and the later will be demonstrated at the Conference. And if you can’t wait for the former, you can try the four-way mashup developed by the good folks at iNetOffice in partnership with ShareMethods. This very impressive demo will be presented during the One Day in the Life of an Office 2.0 Worker panel at the Conference next week.
Once the sponsorship agreement has been signed, with the optional sending of a W-9 form and invoice, we need to get paid. For this, we’ve used three payment methods: PayPal, wire transfer, and plain old check mailed to our P.O. box. For the PayPal transaction and the wire transfer, we received email notifications, but found no easy way to link that back to a SugarCRM object without having to do some custom programming. This is where I could see a need for a new service that would provide simple wizards to create web services connected to specific email accounts. In fact, I need some kind of a web event broker.
Having this plus simple service interfaces for EchoSign, SugarCRM, and Zoho Writer that Coghead could consume would allow a non-programmer to develop very sophisticated document-centric workflows that would take weeks to develop with traditional tools. But most importantly, such a workflow would be enabled by existing user interfaces that people are familiar with, like their email client or CRM system, as opposed to imposing a brand-new user interface that creates a significant barrier to adoption. This is what Office 2.0 is all about, and I’m pleased to report that it’s starting to work for scenarios that are far from being trivial.
Entry filed under: BPM 2.0, Office 2.0
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Ismael,
It’s great to see how you’re innovating by tying these new services together. In your original process, the export to PDF/upload to EchoSign appears to be a bit of a redundant step… Wouldn’t it be nice to have an “EchoSign” button right inside Zoho Writer? And of course, if you drive it from EchoSign, a “create document” option that invokes Zoho Writer. You’d still generate the PDF in the background. (for legal or archiving purposes), but you would not really have to touch it.
Zoho, EchoSign team, what do you think?
Zoli,
I think you will see part of it demonstrated at the Conference…
Zoli - indeed we’ve been working on this with Zoho. It should be great. Also, a little more challenging than adding a MeeboMe widget…
Office 2.0 mash-ups should prove very interesting, with more challenges than consumer mash-ups, e.g., around authentication and validation (AppExchange/WebEx connect may help here more than Yahoo/Google); business models; potential brand dilution; and necessity of deeper integration of experience than in a typical Google maps combo.
[…] Ismael Ghalimi has a terrific explanation of how EchoSign, Zoho Writer and SugarCRM have been used to smooth out the sponsoring process for Office 2.0. Regular readers might recall I talked about this in the context of simple things like client engagement letters. Ismael took the idea several steps further, discussing both the creation of sponsor forms and how they fed back to the SugarCRM system. […]
Ismael:
This is great work, and an excellent post. I am currently building up supply chain processes for a high-tech start-up, and will definitely test these concepts. Coghead looks great — I signed up for the beta.
Thanks for leading the way for the rest of us!
-Ryan
Ryan,
You’re very welcome!
Ismael:
Just a thought that occured to me. I don’t know if it is coincidental, but here is the situation: I am building the supply chain operations for a start-up, and one of the things that came up was the need for a Quality Management System that is ISO 9000 compliant. As I pulled the latest version of the ISO 9000:2000 standard, this is what I read right from the start, in section 4.1 called “Establish your quality system”:
Develop your quality management system
- Identify the processes that make up your quality system;
- Describe your quality management processes
Implement your quality management system
- Use quality system processes
- Manage process performance
Improve your quality management system
- Monitor process performance
- Improve process performance
The standard defines quality as the output of a network of processes which need to be understood, managed, and improved. I think BPM is inherently embedded in the ISO 9000:2000 standard, and anybody that is ISO certified stands a good chance of having the background work needed to migrate to a BPM application.
I thought you might find this interesting.
-Ryan
Ismael,
I couldn’t agree with you more that Microsoft Outlook would not cut it to support what you attempted to do. One question remains. Have you tried Infopath by any chance?
There is a good chance that Microsoft will demo the 2007 Microsoft Office suite including all standard packages (Word, Excel, Access, etc.) and other packages such as Visio, Infopath, Project, FrontPage, etc. with collaborative servers (e.g. Sharepoint).
My experience with the latest Office 2.0 suite so far is that they collectively fall short of even Office 2003 in capabilities, let alone 2007! Let me give you an example. Does any of the current Office 2.0 project management applications supports EVM (Earned Value Management — an ANSI Standard) and Critical Chain (a field-proven project scheduling and management tool)? Another example. Can each of the Office 2.0 application embed objects (tables, graphics, texts, audios, etc.) and get updates from the sources automatically?
If Office 2.0 can catch up and surpass the capabilities of Microsoft’s Office suite in a year after the inaugural Office 2.0 Conference, I will be all for it and dump Microsoft Office suite!
Keep up the good work.
-Francis
Ryan,
Yes, ISO 9000 should be a great driver for BPM moving forward.
Francis,
Glad to see you back!
Take a look at Projity. It’s getting there. Zoho Project does not have Microsoft Project’s sophistication yet, but it’s plenty enough for a lot of project management tasks, and the user interface is extremely well thought-out. I don’t think it will only take a year for Office 2.0 to catch up with it’s 1.0 counterpart in terms of features, but I don’t think that we need such a thing to happen before Office 2.0 hits the mainstream. It should be fun anyway…
Ismael,
I read the capabilities of Projity. The advantages of Projity, as compared to the MS-Project 2003, are that it can run on several client platforms (through JAVA). With MS-Project 2007, which is Office 2.0 compatible, a web-browser is all a user needs, regardless of the client platform (the beauty of AJAX and SOA) to run MS Office Suite 2007.
Moreover, Project Management is much more than those capabilities listed on Projity’s web site. It overlaps with performance management (Balanced Scorecard), portfolio managment, program management, and requirements management — the basis for product life cycle management in Systems Engineering, which oversees all disciplines including IT, from inception to disposal of a product.
I am a very demanding user of all systems, Office Suite included. All my IT projects must meet with stringent user requirments. Perhaps, I am an end-user advocate too!
By the way, Ismael, which version of an Office 2.0 spreadsheet can support Simulation and OR (Operatonal/Operations Research) in Statistical Analyses and Optimizatons (e.g. Analysis of Variance and Mixed Integer Programming)?
Of course, Office 2.0 will evolve overtime. For now, it can do most of the rudimentary functions.
-Francis
Francis,
You’re an Office power user, and Office 2.0 won’t be ready for the type of use you’re making of your office productivity suite before quite some time. But you’ll also find that Office 2.0 can do things that Office 1.0 cannot, especially when it comes to collaboration and mobility. At the end of the day, it’s only a matter of priorities.
Ismael,
I sure am a demanding user. In the early 70’s, when conducting large scale studies, I had to use several stand alone packages such as: MPSX (Mathematical Programming System Extended), GPSS (General Purpose Simulation System), and SPSS or Bi-med statistical packages. Preparation of input data and transformation of output from one package to be input of another package consumed a significant amount of time. Don’t forget, keypunch card days! Each package had its own coding language too.
With Excel’s Solver, most of the problems of the 70’s disappeared. Excel is currently the most used package for teaching OR (Operations Research) in most if not all first tier universities, incluing MIT, Harvard, U of T, etc.
Will Office 2.0 replace Excel in one, two, or three years?
OR is one discipline that many large enterprises (e.g. US Government Departments, particularly DoD, DOT, and DOE) rely on to sustain its competive edge or superiority.
-Francis
Francis,
I would give it three to five years. Then it will surpass Excel, for you’ll be able to tap from online computing resources to conduct very complex simulations that a single desktop computer just cannot handle. Accountability of the data manipulated online in such a fashion will also be improved, which will have a significant impact from a compliance and regulatory standpoint.
Francis,
I am a project manager (aren’t we all?), and in a previous life I used to design, build, and install chemical plants. As such, like yourself, I find the current Web 2.0 project management tools lacking in features and performance.
Just like you, I run a program (or portfolio of projects), I need to see critical paths and/or chains, I need to to work breakdown, assign and monitor tasks, etc. In my mind, this requires:
- an organization — or PMO
- a PM methodology - PMBOK, Prince, CC, etc.
- PM tools: Primavera, Microsoft Project, etc.
- communication tools: e-mail, phone, fax, meetings, etc.
I think Office 2.0 tools in the project management space are aiming at combining the last two, in order to offer a management/collaboration set of tools that (hopefully) greatly enhances execution.
Think back how many Gantt charts, reports, and memos you did print on average over the lifetime of a project. How many e-mails, phone calls and faxes have you made/sent? How many meetings have you attended where significant travel dollars were spent? I used to work for an Australian company that probably spent well over a million dollars in travel annualy for project-related meetings.
So, while I acknowledge that the feature set is in its infancy, I welcome the collaboration/communication features that point to the future of work. On top of all this, add on-demand, SaaS features, and the lowered IT costs, and you have a winner — hopefully in the not too distant future.
I am sure you know of this already, but I would point you to eProject as a mature tool in that regard, though not exactly Web 2.0 in the strict sense. I feel your pain — try to feel my excitement!
Ryan,
I’ve done a cursory review of eProject. The way I see it, it is a very IT-oriented Project Management Package based on a subscription business model (Software as a Service or Service Bureau in the old days). It is not an enterprise level Program, Portfolio, and Project Management Package. What I am talking about is a “Product Life Cycle” and Performance based PPBS (Planning, Programming, Budgeting System) that links to Balanced Scorecard, Requirements Management, AB/C/B/M (Activity Based Costing, Budgeting, and Management), and Configuration Management in light of CMMI (Capability Maturity Model Integration all the way to level 5 — Optimization). I am not sure that eProject can support Critical Chain yet for project buffer management!
Office 2.0 has a long way to go. My experience tells me that Office 2.0 can never catch up with OpenOffice, which in turn can never catch up with MS Office that keeps on evolving with more sharing and collaboration features in all modes of communication. I don’t think extensibility, interoperativity, and re-usable templates are part of the Office 2.0 requirements! Moreover, in it’s current form (AJAX and SOA), Office 2.0 is not yet standard compliant to W3C’s Accessibility and CC (Common Criteria — C2) for security.
I am sure that subscription based software in general is cheaper than owning and maintaining licensed software. There is a catch though. You must have a fault-tolerant connection to the Internet — meaning, no single point of failure ranging from duplexed land-line, cellular, satellite, or a combination of these.
-Francis
Francis,
With all due respect, you are correct — nobody will ever win the catch-up game. I humbly suggest we give this game up. What Office 2.0 presents is a paradigm shift — an opportunity for the industry to take a fundamental leap and focus on the collaborative features that make a difference.
I use OpenOffice daily, and I have no idea what the majority of features being cloned are — yet I still get what needs getting done. We are already seeing 2.0 application dump extraneous features in favor of smoothing out critical collaborative features, such as concurrent editing, to name one of many.
As a fellow PM-in-training, I look forward to working with everyone in this space to whittle down the what is on our critical path. What I’d love to see our community draw is the critical path for Office 2.0 — a collaborative matrix of components that constantly shifts, thus resulting in some kind of console dynamically prioritizing, based on our continued input. One such input is what use cases we each envision to make the biggest impact in our everyday projects!
Who’s game?
Having been away for a while, I’ve joined this thread a bit late…
One aspect which seems to have been missed is the opportunity for us to move from the monolithic “Swiss Army Penknife” approach which Microsoft Office exemplifies (and OpenOffice.org is imitating).
It is an oft quoted statistic (though where the original came from I don’t know) that users typically only want or need 20% of Microsoft Office — but different users need different slices.
I personally would like to see Office 2.0 develop along the Unix lines of one tool does one thing well. The concept of a basic tool with plug-ins to allow users to customize is exemplified in Firefox — I can choose which plugins suit my needs and import those — and leave out those I don’t want or don’t like.
I believe that this approach can redusce bloat AND allow everyone to have what they want. Darwinism will work to ensure that popular extensions are added and supported whilst gimmicks, eye candy and less useful bloat is left out.
Come on! let’s stop playing catch-up with an inefficient model, and start leading with a lean, mean and efficient paradigm.
Guys:
I do not know if this belong here, but here it is anyway:
I have a BlackBerry which serves as my ultimate mobile access, and just the other day I found a great application called SoonR that offers mobile access to your desktop/laptop files, e-mail, calendar and pretty much anything else that you allow it to.
I’ve been using it for a week now, and I think it’s fantastic. Check it out and let me know what you think. If you can find/know of a different and/or better application, let us all know. To me SoonR is really great.
Thanks,
-Ryan
Congratulations to the Office 2.0 Conference…
This week, I had the amazing opportunity to attend the Office 2.0 Conference in San Francisco. I would just like to say a very public congratulations to Ismael Ghalimi and the team at IT|Redux I found the conference to be…
[…] What’s working? Most of the applications that were presented at the conference are working today. EchoSign won Best of Show, and it’s totally deserved. Joyent received the Best Office 2.0 Suite Award, and their user interface, strongly inspired by the Mac OS X operating system, certainly makes it a very attractive option. Finally, Vyew got praised for a superb demonstration, and I’ll definitely start playing with this innovative presentation tool. […]
Speaking of ISO 9000 and BPM, I just ran across this article — I am still reading it, but it seems to present a very interesting take on business rules from the ISO 9000 standard perspective.
Could it be that ISO will become the starting point for BPM? There probably are thousands of small, medium and large companies that are ISO certified, but have yet to look at BPM.
Gold mining rush to start anytime now!
Ismael,
Your piece talked quite a bit about W-9 forms… Well, EchoSign has launched a free W-9 signing tool. Now you can get your W-9s signed, faxed back, and PDF’d in seconds.
Jason,
This is awesome! Exactly what I needed!
Best regards
-Ismael
[…] Price All the applications we reviewed, at the exception of docHarbor, provide a free evaluation version, and all but docHarbor and DocuSign provide a free version as well. Nevertheless, all 7 applications also provide commercial versions, priced from $5 to $149 per month (pricing for docHarbor is not made publicly available). Overall, the applications we reviewed seemed to be priced fairly, and are built upon sound business models. When considering the adoption of a workflow-oriented document management application (Blinksale, DocuSign, EchoSign, and FreshBooks), customers should evaluate the number of documents to be processed each month, and the overall cost of processing each document, in order to come up with a meaningful Return on Investment model. For example, EchoSign has been used for signing all sponsorship agreements established for the Office 2.0 Conference [article], and the cost savings for this event alone paid for more than three years of subscription. […]
[…] There is more than anecdotal evidence to prove that the model is working for a new breed of SaaS vendors, but some examples might help paint a clear picture. Two vendors that I am quite familiar with, EchoSign and Koral, each managed to sign tens of paying customers through the AppExchange in less than six month. Xcellery, which launched less than a year ago, signed their first customer last December, and got their first AppExchange customer this week. By any measure, this is fast. […]
[…] If you include sponsorship agreements signed with sponsors and statements of work signed with service providers, about 100 contracts have to be signed by the multiple parties involved with the conference’s organization. In order to make it paper free and reduce time-to-close, we are using the excellent EchoSign electronic document signing solution. The workflow we used last year has been described in this past article, and will remain pretty much the same this year. Yesterday, I even signed a contract from my iPhone. […]
Trackback this post | Subscribe to the comments via RSS Feed
Leave a Comment