Karlstads Bostads AB owns approximately one third of all apartment blocks in Karlstad. Administering these buildings was hugely time consuming and this prompted the organization to begin efforts to improve their processes last autumn. Together with Barium, new process tools have been introduced which are being used, amongst other purposes, for the hundreds of summer job applications received in the spring.

Improvement efforts at Karlstads Bostads AB have led to a review taking place into how customer cases, documents and archiving, projects, project roles, and workflow are managed. During the autumn, a cooperation with the process company, Barium, was initiated in order to develop a long-term and comprehensive solution. A priority was case management, where the goal was to be able to handle incoming cases more easily. In order to establish effective case management, the Barium Process Server™ was introduced which enables a tailor made IT support to be developed in line with the company’s work processes.

“Incoming customer cases can now be managed in several stages without information being lost and it is possible to track down the whereabouts of a case within the organisation at any given time,” says Gunnar Persson, strategic coordinator at Karlstads Bostads AB. “For example, a service application can be followed through the entire case management process, instead of being forwarded within the organisation as an e-mail.”

The new process tool is already used for the approximately 400 summer job applications received by Karlstads Bostads AB each year. Handling these has previously been time consuming. Using Barium’s process tool, the process is of a much higher quality, especially in relation to the feedback provided to the applicants.

In addition, improvements will be made to the company’s document management. A system from Barium will make it possible for any staff member to create, save and change documents in a similar way. Templates and instructions will control how the work is carried out and the role that each worker has within the company determines which documents are available to them. A role management tool from Barium enables the human resources manager to move workers easily between different roles when changes take place. Team grouping, role ownership, level of authority and the group account for e-mail are automatically updated as soon as an administrator changes a role.

“Much of the efforts employed for Karlstads Bostads AB are about the automation and quality assurance of work processes, made possible by our well-tested solutions,” says Michael Johansson, CEO at Barium. “It is also about freeing resources, for example, enabling the company’s IT department to focus on refining IT tasks instead of administering continuous role changes in the organisation.”

3/25/2010 10:58 AM