Oak Grove Systems - Case Study: jCatalog

Clients
• Client Listing
• Testimonials
• Case Studies
   • Mercy Ships
   • The Arlington Institute
   • Inforonics
   • jCatalog
   • Full Degree
   • Avasta
   • Cardonet

Case Study: Mercy Ships

Mercy Ships Reduces 2 Month Paper Approval Process Down to 2 Weeks

Reactor 5 Provides Workflow Solution for Automation of Critical Volunteer Application Processes

Industry:

Medical

Overview

Mercy Ships, a non-profit charity medical aid organization, had a complex, multi-step volunteer application process that needed to be automated. Using Reactor 5 from Oak Grove Systems as a workflow tool, Mercy Ships created an automation solution to manage their 1,500 annual applications.

Business Solution

Reactor 5 acts as the workflow engine managing, orchestrating and tracking tasks and documents across multiple departments, people and approvals. Deploying Reactor allowed Mercy Ships to improve the visibility, accuracy and timeliness of their processes.

Meet Mercy Ships

Mercy Ships is a global charity headquartered in Garden Valley, Texas. They provide medical care, relief aid and training to caregivers in developing nations. Mercy Ships has 16 offices internationally and 3 hospital ships used to provide services around the world. Mercy Ships’ goal is to service 1 million people annually.

The Business Challenge

Mercy Ships needed a solution to automate and manage their application and credential approval process, including that for their critical medical personnel. Mercy Ships is 100% volunteer organization, as such it processes between 1,200 and 1,500 new volunteer applications each year. With an average of 51 steps, across 3 or more departments, a single application took an average of 40 man hours to approve over a time span of approximately two months. The goal for their in-house built solution was to reduce the approval process down to 14 days and provide automation which resulted in increased visibility of the status of any application and continuity as volunteer staff turned over.

Illustration of Original Volunteer Application Approval Process

The Technical Challenge

Despite the fact that Mercy Ships is a non-profit organization, their technical infrastructure is as robust and sophisticated as any major for-profit corporation.

Multiple Operating Systems
- Linux (servers) and Windows (desktops)
State of the art middleware
- BEA WebLogic and IBM Websphere
Multiple database platforms
- Sybase, IBM Cloudscape, Postgress, MySQL
Applications
- Custom Java applications
- Packaged solutions
  – Microsoft Office Suite
  – Reactor 5
  – Datex WMS
  – OSAS Accounting

Any solution put in place would need to integrate multiple technologies along with the human tasks necessary to properly approve applications.

The Build vs. Buy Decision

Mercy Ships created a cross-functional committee with HR and IT to document the processes and requirements for a solution. The team defined a potential in-house solution, but the solution mandated over 600 man-hours and an extra developer would need to be brought in. Mercy Ships assessed that buying a solution would provide them with more functionality, extensibility, speed of deployment, and would free them of the burden of maintenance.

The Reactor 5 Solution

Reactor 5 was selected for its:

Flexible architecture
Platform independence
o O/S, App Server, Database, Directory Server
Availability as a shared service
Rich functionality
Pure Java implementation

Implementing Reactor 5 provided Mercy Ships with an optimized volunteer application approval process that can track, monitor and increase visibility across each system, step, department and person.

Illustration of Reactor 5 Solution

Acting as a workflow manager, Reactor prompts and instructs each next appropriate step throughout the entire process. By handling many steps in parallel, the volunteer application is reviewed and approved faster and with less handoffs between employees.

Results

Deploying Reactor 5 streamlined the entire volunteer application approval process providing Mercy Ships with:

Entirely trackable processes
Transfer of knowledge across rotating and short-term volunteer employees
Documentation of processes that had never been documented
Reduced man-hours throughout the entire process
Increased accuracy
Increased timeliness of responses

After realizing such impressive results with the application approval process, Mercy Ships is looking forward to expanding their use of Reactor 5 to further improve the application process, as well as other processes across their global organization.

“We did not expect the viral effect Reactor 5 would have for other business process management solutions for our company. The results we achieved with the Reactor solution have inspired requests and prompted new projects both from within our Human Resources department and from other departments.” - Kelvin Burton, CTO, Mercy Ships