SharePoint Development Case Study - Decision Management System

Customer Situation

The customer was using a legacy system for making decisions which have various flaws, such as –

• Manual process was error-prone
• Lack of security and tractability in the manual process
• The system was time-consuming since the paper has to flow from one person to another with manual intervention

The client was expecting effective, simple, and easy to maintain solution which will address all their pain points and will overcome the flaws in the manual system

Congruent's Solution

• Designed and developed Decision Management System which consists of –
  • The application has various roles based on the business requirement, such as
    • DMS Admin – The users in this group will have admin control over the application.
    • DMS Submitter – All the users associated in this group can create/submit the decisions
    • Decision Approvers – There are 3 levels of decision-based on the complexity and the business logic. The decision created can be mapped to any one level by the user. Leve1, Level2, and Level3 approver groups provided and the users can approve decision-based on the decision submitted to them
    • Notification – User in this group will receive notification when the decision is created
    • Decision Monitor – DMS submitter can choose/nominate any person to monitor the decision
• Facility to maintain master lists for Region, Domain, Team, Urgency, Geographies
• Workflow process – Once the decision is submitted for approval, the workflow will activate and following actions can be taken –
  • The workflow will trigger a notification to the concerned approver (Leve1 or Level2 or Level3)
  • The approver can take any decision on the request such as –
    • Approve – The decision will be approved and notification will be sent
    • Reject – The decision will be rejected and notification will be sent
    • Need more information – If the approver wants additional information from the submitter. Notification will be sent to the creator of the decision and the user can resubmit the decision for approval on providing the details
    • Escalate - Decision will be sent to approver based on the “Level” of a decision. However, if approver feels that this decision needs approver from the next level, he can request the next level approver to take the decision
    • De-escalate – If approver feels that this decision can be approved by the previous level, he can request the previous level approver to take the decision
    • Recommendation – Approver can request his subordinate to give their recommendation. The selected user, cannot take a decision but only give his recommendation
• Decision Views – Application has the facility to view decision at various stages for users as below –
  • My Decisions – DMS Submitter can view all of his decisions in different stages-
    • My Draft Decisions – Decisions which are in draft mode (i.e. the user is still working on the same) will be shown in this view. The user can edit the decision any number of times before it is submitted for approval
    • My Pending Decisions – Once the decisions are submitted for approval, it will reflect in this view.
    • My Concluded Decisions – Once any action was taken on the decision (Approved or Reject), it will be displayed in this view
  • Approver View – Approver can view all the decisions submitted to him and action taken –
    • Waiting for my approval – the requests which are waiting for the approver to take any decisions will be shown in this view
    • Waiting for approval after recommendations – the requests which the approver submitted for getting the recommendations from this subordinate will be shown here
    • Waiting for my recommendations – the requests which have been asked to recommend by the senior approver will be shown here
    • The decision I approved – all the approved decisions will be shown here
• Decision search – Users can view all the approved decisions. The decision can be filtered on various fields such as Domain / Region / Level of decision / Priority for fast and accurate retrieval of the information