Speaking at the SPE Workshop on Business Process Management (BPM) last December, Kurt McCaslin presented KerrMcGee’s (KMG) OpenText/Livelink-based applications for a variety of internally-developed applications. McCaslin compared an ‘out of the box’ Livelink forum with KMG’s finalized E&P Discussion Forum to stress the importance of the user interface. This now includes a variety of domain specific functionality to enhance the user experience.
SOX compliance
BPM is being driven in part by the requirement for Sarbanes-Oxley compliance. The technology has eliminated documents previously lost in routing. Similar systems are used to track IT change management and compliance. User training time is down by a whopping 80% thanks to efficient communication and self paced learning.
HR - AFE
Another application helps in hiring and retaining new staff through high quality ‘orientation’ of new employees. A web site gives candidates access to information on the hiring process. Finally a new AFE workflow has turned a complex, 11 page document into a streamlined, one page web form. Attachments can carry additional detail including spreadsheets, presentations, maps, etc. Since all the information is full text indexed it’s all searchable. McCaslin concludes that the BPM process is a balance between information collection and usability. The trick is to focus on those attributes absolutely necessary to enhance searching and data integration, to build a great user interface and to get a good handle on the underlying data.
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