Company history

In 1867, Wilhelm Emil Fein set up a company which made physical and electrical devices. It was in this company that his son Emil Fein invented the first handheld power drill some 30 years later, in 1895. This invention was to become the cornerstone for a range of highly reliable power tools that FEIN continues to make in Germany until this day — and that have earned the company its excellent worldwide reputation among customers in industry and trade alike. For more than 150 years now, FEIN has been one of the world’s leading manufacturers of power tools which are distinguishable by their exquisite workmanship. One reason why FEIN enjoys this position is that with each new product the company continues to live up to its own ambition to create virtually indestructible tools.

Baseline situation

Originally, the process “employee change” (i.e., the arrival, departure, or role change of anemployee) worked like this: The HR department would initiate the workflow using forms that were then passed on from one department to another and had to be handled individually by each responsible manager. Next, the new employee’s superior would fill in which resources needed to be handed out to them (laptop, monitor, etc.). Finally, the form would arrive in the IT department, which procured the required equipment and created a data record for the new employee in the company’s IT system.

Obviously, this manual process was lengthy, cumbersome and error-prone—forms tended to get lost or fail to be forwarded.

Requirements

Last year, FEIN began working with SharePoint. The next step was to implement WEBCON BPS in order to automate and digitalize many internal workflows and to replace the paperwork.

The “new employee entry” workflow was chosen as a suitable stepping stone for implementing WEBCON BPS; the requirement was to simplify and automate the creation and handling of database records for new employees. The new workflow was to make sure that all departments and signatories could get their respective tasks done in a swift, straightforward manner and that the whole procedure was managed as a single process. If a task is not completed within a defined time, the person it was assigned to receives a reminder email. The type and frequency of escalations are fully customizable. Another requirement was the ability to repeat each step of the process in case there are additional questions. Finally, the entire process had to be multilingual (German and English).

An important reason why FEIN chose WEBCON BPS was its fast and short learning curve for FEIN’s own IT staff. From the very beginning, a key requirement was to empower the customer to implement their own processes using WEBCON BPS. In a detailed presentation, large portions of the process were already demonstrated in live conditions, offering impressive proof of WEBCON BPS’s capability. This was pivotal for FEIN’s decision in favour of WEBCON and VSB.

Conclusion

Marco Escher, CRM & SharePoint specialist at FEIN, recapitulates, “VSB gave us strong support in configuring the solution. The few small problems we did encounter were easily resolved with thanks to the assistance of WEBCON’s support team. In effect, the whole implementation process, which was largely carried out together with the supplier, ended up being a ‘workshop’ including installation as well as training.” Escher is highly satisfied with the new workflow management solution. In the meantime, he has already implemented additional processes with WEBCON BPS by himself.