By Rachael Howden, Team Leader of Records Management, Goulburn Valley Water

A stopgap digital signature solution that was implemented in 2014 was soon to be decommissioned which left our organisation facing a challenge to continue the rollout of digital approvals. With the assistance of our partner iCognition and the implementation of their RM Workflow solution, we now have created over 18,500 workflows and have 25 different analytics charts and we are really only just getting started.

We have been committed users of Content Manager or TRIM since 1996, but it’s always good to find software that can enhance its capabilities and, in this case, provide a solution that ticked a number of boxes for us: Workflow, Approval, User Experience, Mobility and more.

In the five months since inception, we now have 90 different workflow templates. And while this may seem like too many to some, there are access controls applied so people can only see the templates that are relevant to them which makes their lists manageable.

Goulburn Valley Water (GVW) is a Victorian utility that provides water and wastewater services to a population of 128,000. We have over 60,000 customers across 54 towns who are connected to 37 water supply systems and 26 wastewater management facilities.

The GVW region extends from the outskirts of Melbourne in the south to the Murray River in the north, covering approximately 20,000km².

We implemented a DocuSign signature platform in 2014 to transition from ‘wet’ signatures and move to an electronic process to eliminate our hard copy records. This was envisaged as a temporary measure to enable everyone to become accustomed with electronic approval, very similar to many other electronic approvals which were already being conducted including invoice approvals and timesheets.

After working well for us for many years, we were beginning to experience issues with the DocuSign product and then learned that in May 2023 it was being removed from the market and decommissioned.

Requiring an alternative solution, we were also keen to make the approval process more efficient for our end users.

While DocuSign was the signature platform we’d been using to approve documents, these were being workflowed via Content Manager (CM) using stepped Actions. We had previously looked at using the built-in CM Workflow module, however it was felt our users would find this too difficult to adjust to, and so we continued using the stepped actions.

Now, while CM stepped actions are fine for simple processes, they’re very limited compared to the functionality that CM Workflow provides.

Due to GVW internal processes and many of our users using custom set ups, we also faced the added complexity of people being able to complete other people’s actions, a problem in itself that needed to be addressed.

The approval process also required two steps: signing the document and completing the action. This would sometimes cause problems when users would complete one of the steps but forget the other.

Users also complained that any minor change to a document would invalidate the signature and trigger a new round of review and signing by all relevant parties. This was resulting in extra work and unnecessary delays.

So, what were we looking for?

We investigated a number of different options and considered the pros and cons of continuing with another signature solution to mimic our current processes or move to what we felt would be a more streamlined workflow.

We needed to maintain a robust internal approval method for a large number of documents and forms. But we wanted a simpler and more powerful approval mechanism which would improve and streamline business processes.

The solution needed to be robust and provide a detailed audit log of approval, showing who was the approver and when and when actions had occurred.

With the decommissioning of the DocuSign (CoSign) product looming, we trialled iCognition’s RM Workflow which looked to fit well to our requirements. We then worked with a select group of users who we’d identified would benefit from the improvements that were being offered, and this really helped engage them early on in the trial.

Although, we faced some significant challenges:

• We were extremely time poor - despite over 12 months’ notice, we really struggled with resources to test the new solution and packed a lot of work into the last months prior to rolling out.
• The transition period - if we were to move away from actions how was the transition going to work? There were 65 multi-step actions which would all need to be re-created as workflows. But if we were going to this effort there was no point creating a mirror image of them – we wanted to be able to make the most of workflow’s capabilities and improve processes at the same time.
• It was going to be impossible to have a clean-cut date of ending all actions and starting with workflows so how were we going to manage this?
• Having to run the multi-step actions in parallel with the new workflows would mean two methods for end users and how much confusion was this going to cause.
• And training - what was going to give us the best take-up from a training perspective.

Implementation of RM Workflow

Having only tested the RM Workflow solution for a short period, we still felt comfortable that it would meet our requirements.

We worked closely with iCognition and I can honestly say we wouldn’t have met our deadline without the strong commitment from Principal Consultant Alix Campbell who was very patient and helpful as we worked through the translation of our actions into workflows.

Alix tackled the more complex workflows we’d drafted, helping us to ensure the best pathways were developed and pointing out areas that could be improved or needed further work or consultation from process owners.

After some one-on-one training with Alix, I was quite comfortable creating other workflows myself and relatively quickly picked up the logic, start conditions and relevant options that were necessary, but also felt reassured that Alix was only a msg or phone call away and nothing ever seemed too much for her.

Alix may have quite possibly been cursing us on the inside but that never once showed through. Within 6 weeks between us both we’d created 45 different workflows of varying complexities ready to go live.

We also engaged Alix to provide the introduction training to our staff, which gave us the opportunity to observe and assist users as they were guided through using the product. This was predominantly done in person, but users did also have the option to attend online where necessary.

Alix effortlessly engaged our staff across 20 individual sessions with 6 different themed workflow or focus areas. Staff could choose what best suited their requirements across three days.

Without hesitation Alix was adapting sessions and making changes to workflows on the fly, following questions raised or problems identified as we worked our way through the sessions. I cannot speak highly enough of her expertise and support throughout our development, training and implementation phases.

Outcomes and Value

The improvements which have been seen following the implementation of RM Workflow have included:

• The user-friendly interface has appealed to a lot of people, particularly those that weren’t frequent CM users. They like being able to edit or review a document without having to open CM. In particular, casual and non-tech savvy people really seem to be able to take it all on board a lot easier.
• Efficiency gains have been seen in various aspects, but the most resounding is having a single point of approval and the ability to have everything in one place having associated documents encompassed within the workflow, rather than navigating to them all individually.
• With the instructions that can be included as part of the workflow templates the guesswork has been taken away for users. Likewise, when they receive an activity to complete they also know what is required just by looking at the instructions.
• Detailed audit logs and timelines were imperative for many of our workflows, such as payroll processing approvals. There are now different options available to view these and the easy-to-follow storyboard view has been a big winner amongst our teams.
• The placeholder prompts within the workflows have been extremely useful in ensuring everything within the process is followed appropriately and nothing is accidentally overlooked.
• Often notes were missed by some staff within CM but the ease of being able to add them within the workflow and the obvious positioning of them within the interface has been appreciated throughout all teams.
• The ability to provide our users with more complex workflows is much appreciated. Plus being able to send them sequentially or in parallel. Rather than just uncompleting an action or deleting and starting again, workflow has enabled us to 'Roll back" to a particular spot in the workflow and restart from there which has been particularly beneficial for us.
• The analytics page has been invaluable for some teams, but also an area which we see will continue to grow. It provides a great visual which shows an overview of how many activities are sitting within a particular team, person, who has overdue activities being a handy tool for managers to monitor workloads.

I think the numbers really speak for themselves and show how much we’ve gained from the implementation of RM Workfow. I’d really like to thank iCognition, in particular thank Nicholas Fripp and Alix Campbell for all their time and support. We are looking forward to continuing to improve our business processes and automation into the future and our further growth within the RM Workflow workspace.