Paperless Dream — Using Technology to Make Your Company More Efficient and Greener At the Same Time

One of our clients manages a large customer base with the occasional request for a refund. When a customer requests a refund, an employee fills out a paper form and submits it to their manager, who then either approves the refund, declines the refund, or returns the paper form for more information. If the manager approves the refund, it is then forwarded to a higher level manager for final approval.

Given the number of times paper changes hands, our client was experiencing inefficiencies in processing as well as the occasional lost request, which would then need to be rewritten and resubmitted through the process described above.

Our client was interested in a solution that would both reduce overhead as well as make the company greener.

Enter the Paperless Dream Project.

We began with the creation of the approval process and getting the flow of the data defined. Once this was completed, we implemented the flow chart and integrated that with a Visual Force page for the user to view the data. Once the system was in place, we made some minor modifications and enhancements to the overall system to make it easier for the employee to use.

We then built a system that allowed an employee to submit a refund request directly to their supervisor through their CRM tool. This eliminated the inefficiencies from forwarding paper requests and provided the company with a history of the request in the system.

Now that the project is launched, our client can easily enter any relevant information regarding a request and click submit. This forwards the entry on to the next supervisor for approval. If a manager needs additional information, they can instantly return the request to the employee with directions on what is needed to complete processing. If the manager needs to decline a request, they can include details of the denial directly on the entry or they can approve the request and submit it to their manager for final approval.

While the system does not completely automate a refund, it does reduce the amount of time an employee spends on each request, resulting in a reduction of cost per request. In addition, paper has been completely removed from the equation, reducing waste and making the company greener in the process.