Morse, a leading IT services and technology integration company headquartered in the UK, is renowned for its outstanding customer service and is a standard bearer of ISO 9001 service levels.

With the IT services market becoming increasingly competitive and margins decreasing throughout the industry, Morse recognized that better utilization of its existing technology infrastructure and enhancing the way its people worked would have a direct impact on service levels, internal efficiency and customer retention.

Morse identified three key areas of its business where existing processes were time consuming, people-intensive and ripe for efficiency improvements: pre-sales resourcing, order management and tracking, and customer quotations to support sales. Order management and tracking, for example, was a wholly manual system, requiring multiple employees to manually enter customer orders into the existing SAP system, to fulfill orders and to subsequently check the SAP system and with the staff involved to see if transactions had been completed. It was difficult to monitor the ongoing progress of customer orders, and paperwork could get lost during the order process, resulting in delays and customer dissatisfaction.

Morse recognized that streamlining these key processes would enable it to increase productivity and deliver better customer service and satisfaction. Achieving this, however, would require a system that could map and evolve with complex, diverse procedures, and that would be readily understood and embraced by Morse's staff. Equally important was the ability of a new technology solution to optimize Morse's existing IT infrastructure, in particular its SAP system.

"We looked at several technologies and determined that only a business process management (BPM) solution had the versatility to be customized and deployed across the different facets of our business, to deliver exactly what we needed," said Chris Mitchell, IS Director, Morse. "After two months of intensive testing and evaluation of several BPM solutions including iCom Express and Ultimus, only one solution - Metastorm's - met our requirements for flexibility, scalability, transparency and speed to deployment. It was critical that the chosen solution would not only cut costs and enable Morse to become more responsive and efficient, but that we could also trust it to mitigate risk around the processes that are at the absolute heart of our business."

Morse initially implemented Metastorm's solution to automate and manage order management and tracking, customer quotation and pre-sales resourcing processes. By deploying Metastorm's BPM platform as the foundation for its newly-automated Order Management System, access to the SAP installation's reference data was made easier. When a purchase order is now received, the Metastorm solution stores a scanned version of the document so that all those involved in order fulfillment are made aware of the order's particular needs. Staff across multiple departments now have complete visibility of the progress of customer orders, and the ability to address queries immediately means that internal efficiency and customer satisfaction are greatly enhanced.

Another key process to benefit from the Metastorm implementation was the management of price quotations for customers. Previously, customer quotations had to be faxed to the appropriate consultant, who could be anywhere in the UK, for verification on accuracy and technical configuration. Using the BPM solution, Morse sales staff can now ensure that quotes, originally created in SAP, are sent electronically to consultants to check for accuracy and technical configuration. If a response is not received within a set timeframe, escalations built into the system alert relevant staff and action can be taken. This enables a smooth transition of work, compliance with customer Service Level Agreements and ensures ISO adherence.

Metastorm's solution has increased throughput of work within Morse, taken mounds of paperwork out of the business, and has enabled a transparent view of activity, regardless of time or location. It has also delivered dramatically in terms of improving customer service - a major benefit, albeit one that is difficult to quantify. Furthermore the Order Management team has not lost a single Purchase Order since the Metastorm implementation. Says Mitchell: "The Metastorm BPM platform works for us like a living, breathing ISO manual. It enables us to achieve best practices and to adhere to the ISO and SLA standards that are so critical to our organisation."

"Since the Metastorm BPM solution deployment, we have seen a greater sense of shared responsibility amongst our people, a greater degree of transparency and visibility, and better levels of communication across all areas of our business. Staff can now focus on getting things right first time for the customer, using systems that pull together the data required to directly support this objective.. We've been so impressed with what has been achieved that we can clearly see the potential of extending the Metastorm rollout to other parts of the business."