Elly Yates-Roberts |
This article was originally published in the Autumn 2019 issue of The Record. Subscribe for FREE here to get the next issues delivered directly to your inbox.
The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SMFTA) handles all transportation matters in the San Francisco area, including bus lines, bicycling, parking, and the Municipal Railway. SFMTA’s Technology Solutions and Integration (TSI) department is responsible for solving agency employees’ technical problems and finding solutions to improve productivity and business processes.
Virdis Gamble, productivity services manager in the TSI department, began evaluating workflow automation tools after experimenting with out-of-the-box SharePoint workflows to automate the agency’s supply chain processes. These were managed manually through e-mail, which often resulted in problems and delays. The TSI department needed to find a way to automate and ensure the tracking of supply chain processes and tasks. SharePoint workflows proved limited in scope and couldn’t be produced quickly enough.
Gamble evaluated many tools, and while some met SMFTA’s overall requirements, they also came with a lot of coding, servers, and long deployment times. Then, Nintex was suggested. After witnessing Nintex’s ease of use, and its ability to create sophisticated workflows without code, Gamble knew the SFMTA had found the answer to its workflow challenge.
“The infrastructure required for other companies’ workflows was a problem,” said Gamble. “When you need to change something, you have to change the code, recompile it, and bring the process into a live production system. It’s a very convoluted process. A quick change is possible with Nintex – you go directly into the workflow, make the change, and trial it on test servers before implementation. There’s no rigmarole. You don’t need developers. It’s a much cleaner solution.”
Most government agencies don’t have idle IT resources. With Nintex, the SFMTA’s TSI department can deploy automation solutions rapidly. Before Nintex, the TSI team at the SFMTA didn’t have a standard way to deliver process automation solutions. Now, it has a go-to toolset.
SFMTA has deployed Nintex solutions across the agency, supporting internal and external processes including HR alternative work-schedule requests, electronic return-to-work processes, video surveillance requests, and more.
These small transformations have produced big results for the agency. More than 100,000 workflows are executed each year and with each process it automates and digitises, it sees more and more value from its investment in Nintex.