The City of Walnut Creek California is recognized as the regional hub for commercial, cultural, and recreational pursuits in the East Bay. Located 25 miles east of San Francisco at the junction of two major freeways, the community enjoys a reputation as being one of the best planned cities in California.

The City had a manual process in place to track its many critical tasks, and managing critical processes by pen and paper had become unreliable and cumbersome. With 41 projects – ranging from Community Development projects to Public Services projects – in progress at any given time, the City recognized that its manual process lent itself to accountability issues and did not provide management with adequate insight. In some cases, because of the lack of automation, projects found themselves in unforeseen crisis mode—which was a tremendous strain on resources. Faced with problems of lost paperwork, no reporting mechanism and a lack of visibility into project status and historical information, the City knew it had to automate core processes to address these business challenges.

In addition, the City was faced with trying to find a technology that was intuitive and would integrate easily into its existing technology infrastructure. If they could identify a software platform that met these criteria, the City would have a high likelihood of success where employee productivity and technology acceptance and adoption were concerned.

The City turned to Business Process Management (BPM) technology to automate its enterprise. After a competitive review of approximately 20 BPM vendors, the City narrowed the list down to five that met its key requirements, which included the ability to integrate with its existing email system, the flexibility to transfer to a different email system in the future, the ability to perform and meet established project tracking requirements, and the ability to provide Web-based accessibility for its users.

The City quickly selected Metastorm BPM™ due to its flexibility and ability to integrate with its existing Novell Groupwise electronic mail application. Since most City functions are process-driven, Metastorm BPM offers the functionality needed to empower the City to automate endless applications – thus allowing the City to be more efficient and to increase accountability.

Like City of Provo – another Metastorm client – Walnut Creek Information Technology staff had a limited timeframe to implement this project, and they managed to deploy the complete system in under three months. The IT staff also created hands-on training materials and delivered training to about 100 city staff prior to actual implementation.

Metastorm BPM is fully deployed and managing the City’s core strategies projects, tracking milestones and providing reports to management. It has been integrated with the City’s existing e-mail application which allows the City staff to be on the same page when coordinating complex projects. After project data is entered, the City Manager can formally approve the projects, and work on the specific tasks can begin. The City’s projects are often complex and often involve many people—with Metastorm BPM all members of a project team are connected and when each project milestone is reached, the team is automatically notified of accomplishments and delays via e-mail so that there is collective accountability for the overall success of the project.

Metastorm has given the City the ability to keep track of the project history. For example, if a project is declined due to budget, the information is documented in Metastorm BPM for future consideration. In addition, it provides an approval authority mechanism to ensure that select project changes and requests for things like additional funding are escalated and approved by an authorized manager.

The City also plans to use Metastorm BPM to automate additional processes, including Project Tracking, Employee Tracking, the Citizen Complaint Process, IT Helpdesk Requests and the Purchase Requisitions Process, and will eventually deploy it to automate processes city-wide.

The City has had a high-level of acceptance and adoption of Metastorm BPM with its employee population and has received high marks from the City’s management team. The City believes Metastorm will save them significant time and money as it continues to automate processes across the enterprise.

Using Metastorm BPM, the City now has a highly automated means to manage and track projects. All projects are tracked and accounted for and provide management with increased visibility into critical information that they need on a real-time basis. Metastorm has also boosted customer satisfaction by giving the City reporting functionality they did not have before. With Metastorm BPM, they are now able to generate reports and distribute them to elected officials on a quarterly basis.

The City has enhanced employee productivity by empowering its users with access to the information they need to be successful in their roles. They no longer have to leave their desks to track people down for mission critical information and automatic notifications are now in place so that issues are escalated and resolved quickly and deadlines are no longer missed.

“Metastorm BPM has enabled us to become more efficient and ensures that our core strategies projects are no longer lost, delayed or overlooked. Projects can now easily move between members of the team and reporting to management and elected officials is available, timely and accurate,” stated Gary Lech, CIO, City of Walnut Creek. “Life before and after Metastorm is like night and day. Since implementing Metastorm BPM, nothing goes unnoticed; nothing is hidden, overdue or forgotten.”