Ariel needed to develop a solution for establishing and enforcing tracking procedures on numerous company assets such as access to financial software, data feeds, fund administration applications, and trading systems, as well as a variety of hardware assets. In addition, Ariel wanted this solution to advance their vision of having a single development platform that would reduce the number of technologies and products that had to be supported.

Solution Overview
Ariel’s prior asset tracking process involved a series of paper and electronic forms which interacted with multiple legacy systems, Excel spreadsheets, and custom databases. The new IT Asset Management workflow solution had to accept electronic requests for company assets, track approvals electronically, notify the appropriate people that they had actions to complete, and ensure that the process was auditable by Ariel management or third party auditors at any time.  Since user acceptance of the solution was identified as a key measurement of project success, usability was a top priority.   In addition, the solution had to advance their vision of consolidating technology investments into a single development platform. 

Based on Risetime’s deep workflow experience and its Microsoft Gold Certified Partner status, Ariel Investments selected Risetime to be their full service solution provider for overall strategy, capacity planning, design, development and integration of the new solution. After initial requirements gathering sessions with Ariel’s department heads, a Risetime Business Analyst identified, designed, and documented five key workflows that met all requirements and significantly enhanced the current asset tracking processes. A Risetime Architect created a hardware capacity planning recommendation and assisted Ariel in the selection of SharePoint 2007 and InfoPath 2007/Forms Server as the appropriate development platform for the solution.  Risetime also worked with Ariel’s infrastructure team to plan for SharePoint’s integration with a new SAN storage system which positioned Ariel to easily scale use of the SharePoint platform in the future. In addition, the Microsoft licensing requirements were clarified and the appropriate budget and timeline defined.

InfoPath 2007/Forms Server provided an efficient solution for the design of easy-to-use task interfaces to support each workflow. By using SharePoint 2007 with its native support for the Windows Workflow Foundation, Ariel can take advantage of SharePoint 2007 administration capabilities, allowing internal Ariel staff members to maintain workflow data without creating custom administration screens. In addition, by selecting SharePoint 2007, the internal IT and support staff will become experienced with a consistent development and maintenance environment, reducing their dependency on outside consultants and vendors, and simplifying the hiring and training requirements for internal support personnel.

From an auditing perspective, each manager’s asset requests, approval of requests by asset owners, and confirmation of successful completion is now tracked and recorded by the system in a separate MS SQL Server database.  Ariel’s internal technical resources are also able to use existing reporting design software to create and run ad hoc or scheduled auditing reports on this data. As a second source of auditing data, upon completion of each workflow, a workflow record is created in the SharePoint 2007 Record Center and is viewable from inside SharePoint 2007 without the use of any additional software.

Because of the high degree of workflow automation and interaction with external databases, workflows were developed using Visual Studio 2005 and the optional extensions for .NET Framework 3.0 (WWF - Windows Workflow Foundation) which provided access to Foundation assemblies and the Visual Studio Designer for WWF.  The Enterprise Edition of SharePoint 2007 provides Ariel users with browser-based access to the InfoPath task interfaces via Forms Server.  As a result, Ariel’s users do not require additional software to be installed on their desktops, which ensured a quick and efficient roll out of the solution.

Value Measurement
Although this initial workflow solution focused on automating the asset tracking process, the implementation of the SharePoint 2007 platform has provided Ariel Investments with a robust development platform for creating future workflow processes and content management solutions which will increase overall business and IT efficiency and simplify future system development activities.  Ariel Investment's IT Asset Management Workflow Solution that Risetime implemented has:

• Streamlined and standardized the tasks and auditing process associated with requesting, implementing and tracking assets for Ariel employees. 
• Allowed internal Ariel employees to maintain the workflow system with minimal outside support.
• Allowed internal Ariel employees to use existing knowledge and software to create auditing reports that will accommodate current and future auditor requests.
• Consolidated multiple software solutions into a single-platform solution which resulted in the definition of a clear training and development plan for Ariel’s internal technical team.
• Decreased the amount of effort needed for future development and adoption of additional workflow solutions.
• Decreased labor, expense and planning requirements for hardware, software and licensing to accommodate future Intranet, extranet and workflow solutions.