Baylor University transforms request management with Nutrient Workflow

Baylor University in Waco, Texas, is a private Baptist university and a nationally ranked liberal arts institution. Chartered in 1845 by the Republic of Texas, Baylor is the oldest continually operating university in the state.

With more than 12,000 enrolled undergraduates and hundreds of academic and administrative professionals to support, Baylor operates under a centralized IT office that services its users on the main campus as well as satellite locations.

In 2007, in line with its goals of identifying and implementing effective technologies, Baylor University’s Information Technology Services (ITS) implemented a workflow and document management application with Nutrient Workflow to centralize and streamline the data entry and approval of all departmental requests that impact the university’s budget — from hiring temporary personnel, to requests for funding a new building or new department.

The challenge

In early 2007, Baylor Manager of Human Resources and Financial Systems Pete Able and Senior Programmer Nathan Atkinson recognized the need to improve the workflow associated with requests. Up to that point, Baylor had worked with a project management software vendor to create a custom/proprietary solution for financial requests, but that method became cumbersome. It had a poor user interface for end users submitting or approving requests, making end user adoption difficult. The software customization required was pricey, and it limited ITS’ ability to scale existing processes across departments and to reuse or modify processes once they had been automated.

The ITS department set out to find a technology solution that would:

• Limit or completely replace manual and paper-based processes for personnel actions.

• Centralize and streamline the review and approval process for requests that had a budget impact.

• Track and summarize requests that needed to route through multiple departments before approval.

The evaluation

Baylor formed a process improvement project team to evaluate commercial software solutions. The project team consisted of three members from ITS, representatives from the budget office, and key budget contacts from academic and administrative areas. The group evaluated multiple software packages based on training/consulting costs; track record with educational clients; simplicity of user interface; and cost compared to functional objectives met/exceeded.

In July 2007, Baylor selected Nutrient Workflow as its workflow and approval process solution.

Activation summary

Baylor rolled out Nutrient Workflow campus-wide, customizing its version as BearQuest and using the Baylor logos. It experienced resistance-free end user adoption from the start.

Baylor initially licensed Nutrient Workflow, on its own onsite server, for hundreds of potential requesters and upward of 100 defined “approvers.” Today, all of the university’s faculty and staff — more than 3,000 in total — are designated users of the system, with a few hundred using it daily, and up to 50 using it concurrently.

ITS has added a variety of new requests and processes over the years so that now anyone on campus making a budget, hiring, reimbursement, or travel request does so through BearQuest.

The Nutrient Workflow solution

Upon selection of Nutrient Workflow, Baylor immediately began development in the new system. Its goal with the Nutrient Workflow solution was to build a process around a reusable framework that would work for the first process and scale for additional processes down the road.

While processes are being defined, Nutrient Workflow generates a visual workflow diagram that illustrates the steps, branches, loops, and milestones in a process. Using the workflow diagram was crucial for Baylor. In addition, Nutrient Workflow allowed ITS to copy, version, or modify a process with just one click so the ITS team didn’t need to start from scratch for each new process it added.

Baylor was able to simplify, and in some cases, reduce the need for human data entry, saving time and reducing the potential for mistakes. For example, Baylor integrated its proprietary .NET Employment Management System (EMS) with Nutrient Workflow so that personnel changes initiated through Nutrient Workflow used and validated against the EMS data. During the request process, Nutrient Workflow launches EMS and pulls data from ERP systems. Once the requester submits the necessary data into the proprietary system, it then advances to the next step in the Nutrient Workflow process flow. When the information has been updated in the proprietary human resources (HR) system, the data refreshes within Nutrient Workflow.

The rollout of Nutrient Workflow also allowed Baylor to evaluate approvals and optimize its automation accordingly. Nutrient Workflow enables easy routing through multiple departments when a user requests a high-dollar item, while a request with little or no budget impact is accelerated and optimized with a collapsed approval flow requiring less data entry and fewer administrative departments involved in the review.

Just three months after the rollout, Baylor had met all of the initial goals. In the beginning, BearQuest was used for human resources functions such as hiring requests, creation of new positions, and separation/termination processes. In the last few years, use of Nutrient Workflow has been expanded to requests for academic departments such as creation of new courses or changes to existing courses in the catalog prior to registration periods. In another process, when Baylor students are planning a mission trip through one of the campus organizations, the request is made through Nutrient Workflow and routed to the coordinator of missions and the center for international education, and a risk assessment of the destination is made before the trip can be approved.

The newest process, Baylor’s most extensive to date, is for submission and approval of expense reports for travel. Baylor uses the database push/pull utility to write out data to local reporting tables in its financial system, PeopleSoft, which provides administrative users better visibility to travel expenses by category or department. Once a request is approved for payment, the accounts payable office can run a job that takes that data and creates a voucher in the financial system to issue the payment.

According to Able, up to 400 departments — close to all departments within the university — are now using Nutrient Workflow, since at some point they all need to hire, terminate, promote, create new positions, request construction or premises improvement, and file expense reports.

The benefits

For departments making requests, Nutrient Workflow provides real-time and 360-degree visibility into the project lifecycle of a request. From the time the user launches the browser to enter the request data, they can see what steps are involved in getting an approval and where their request is in the process, and they receive updates on the status through email notifications.

“Before moving to the Nutrient Workflow solution, there was a lot of confusion on the backend of the budget process — we’re geographically and operationally distributed with different schools and deans all needing to make and manage requests. From the smallest academic request for a new faculty position, to a major capital request for a new building, there’s associated financial request data to be reviewed on the administrative side,” Able said. “Often the people making the request didn’t know who to contact or how to proceed. We needed a system that would help the administrators by giving them visibility into all the request data, but even more so, something that would help the requesters follow the right practice while making a request. In the past, we’ve had to reject requests because the person making the request skipped a step, failed to supply all the pertinent information, and the like. Now, with Nutrient Workflow and its easy-to-use, 100-percent web-based interface, we have greatly reduced these problems.”

Both department and institution budgeting processes have become better managed with reporting and real-time visibility. For any given project, the budget impact and the timing of the budget items are immediately available in Nutrient Workflow. Reports can be run directly from Nutrient Workflow or can be exported for further manipulation and analysis into Baylor’s reporting package. Baylor linked Nutrient Workflow to Crystal Enterprise so that functional users in the budget, HR, and payroll offices can access the data from Nutrient Workflow, along with their department-specific needs, and run more detailed reports.

Not only do requests get entered and responded to in a timely manner, but everyone who considers making a change — from hiring a new resource to reorganizing their department — can see the full budget impact of their request before the request is completed and approved. Additionally, when a user goes into the system, they can see their open items and a complete view of their request history.

“The administrative areas see the more immediate benefits, but the campus community sees the benefits over a longer time frame,” Able said. “For all the users on this campus, even those initially resistant to change, they can now see where their request is, rather than just think it’s a piece of paper laying on someone’s desk somewhere.”

The BearQuest system processes almost 1,000 requests per month, several hundred of which are expense reports.

ROI

Just three months after rolling out Nutrient Workflow, ITS started receiving positive feedback. Academic departments adopted the application and users were happy with the interface and the streamlined process flows.

Administrative departments found that Nutrient Workflow made it almost impossible for requests to fall through the cracks. Requests are submitted correctly, and no steps are missed, so decisions that carry a budget impact are happening in a more timely fashion and with 100 percent visibility.

Additionally, unexpected budget shortfalls and surpluses have been reduced. The institution is able to make better, timelier decisions about budgets across the board.

Next steps

Seven years into its Nutrient Workflow implementation, Baylor has far from exhausted its opportunities with the system. There is talk of expanding the missions workflow to include any international travel with which the university is involved, as well as adding a process for HR to identify early on the tax and legal implications when it hires someone who doesn’t live in Texas.

Baylor University’s journey with Nutrient Workflow is a compelling example of how thoughtful process automation can drive transformation at scale. What began as a solution to streamline HR and budget-related requests has evolved into a university-wide platform, empowering thousands of users and improving operational efficiency across departments. By reducing manual errors, ensuring compliance, and offering real-time visibility, Nutrient Workflow has helped Baylor make more informed decisions faster, with fewer roadblocks. As the university continues to expand its use of the platform, its investment in automation is clearly delivering long-term value — not just for administrators, but for the entire campus community.