The criteria for submitting an entry are quite simple: the project should have been operational for six months prior to nomination, and have been installed within the past two years. The submission guidelines, however, are more detailed. To be recognized as winners, companies must address three critical areas: excellence in innovation, excellence in implementation and excellence in strategic impact to the organization.

While successes in these categories are prerequisites for winning an Award for Excellence, it would reward all companies to focus on excelling in innovation, implementation and impact when installing imaging and workflow technologies. Without doing so, they will not achieve the full potential document imaging and workflow offer. Companies must recognize that implementing innovative technology is useless unless the organization has a successful implementation approach that delivers—and even surpasses—the anticipated benefits. True visionaries are not content with merely achieving benefits; they are proactively driven to raise the standard for excellence in their industry—in essence, moving the competitive goalposts.

To add depth and meaning to the case studies, four leading industry analysts and experts were invited to contribute chapters from their respective perspectives.

Connie Moore, leading industry analyst and Vice President with Giga Information Group, and Excellence Awards judge, takes a thoughtful look at knowledge management, and workflow’s role in building process knowledge within organizations. As the knowledge era unfolds, companies will increasingly focus on empowering knowledge workers rather than automating clerical processes that are based on outdated division of labor concepts. Instead, workflow will become a repository for Process Knowledge, allowing companies to quickly adapt and redesign processes as the business environment changes.

In Beyond Groupware and Workflow, Dr. Marvin Manheim presents his premise of Cognitive Informatics: the role of IT is to enhance people’s ways of working. Building on this premise, an information architecture of an enterprise can be developed. His chapter outlines key elements of this architecture and shows how these directions of software development can be integrated into a unified architecture that meets the needs of the organization and the needs of individuals and workgroups.

Business Event Methodology is a hands-on tutorial examining the central concept of Organizational Events and how to partition Business Events. Brian Dickinson, author of Risk Free Business Reengineering contributes an excerpt from his new book Creating Customer Focused Organizations.

Brigham Young University (Provo, Utah) with a 30,000 student body, now processes more than four million documents annually using a workflow system with imaging technology supplied by Data General’s AVImaging, that replaces outdated microfiche and microfilm technology and integrates legacy systems with image automation. Nominating vendor is Staffware, Wellesley MA. Merit Award: Imaging, North America

Bristol & West plc, (Bristol, England), reengineered its Mortgage Application Processing system, achieving not only a reduction of 25% in the time required to key applicants’ data onto the mortgage system, but also its corporate goal of providing "World Class Customer Satisfaction.’’ Nominated by Tower Technology, London England. Merit Award: Workflow, Europe

Defense Contract Management District West (DCMDW) (El Segundo, CA) is advancing toward a paperless environment with the implementation of the Totally Imaged Federal File (TIFF) project which automates the sophisticated human resource process. Nominating integrator is Universal Systems, El Segundo, CA. Merit Award: Imaging, North America

Federal Central Register (Berlin, Germany) The Federal Central Register (FCR) in Berlin, a division of the German Civil Supreme Court, with a staff of 470 people, is responsible for the administration of an enormous database with records of all convictions of German citizens from German and foreign courts. The key aspect to note about this system is that through change management principles, major changes can be introduced successfully in organizations that would normally be extremely resistant to change. Nominating vendor is InConcert, Inc. with Dr. Hartmut Storp of Ahrensburg, Germany, as integrator. Silver Award: Workflow, Europe

Hypo-Bank (Unterfoehring, Germany) Hypo-Bank’s EDP environment reflects the high complexity which results from a combination of central mainframes communicating with more than 600 decentralized LANs with more than 10,000 PCs. Hypo-Bank’s management has acknowledged the use of document and workflow management as an important success factor in relation to competitiveness. The main concept of this installation: this is an example of imaging and workflow being used pervasively as essential IT infrastructure to support numerous business processes throughout the organization. Nominating vendor is IBM Corporation. Gold Award: Imaging, Europe

Janssen Research Foundation (Titusville, NJ) uses imaging and workflow to manage case report forms (CRFs) to reduce drug development time, specifically the clinical trial execution process, which involves final data collection, verification and data entry. Nominating vendor is Universal Systems Inc., Chantilly, VA. Merit Award: Imaging, North America

Tennessee Valley Authority (Decatur, AL) reengineered its Procedures Control and Maintenance Work Processes handling paper-intensive 14,000 work orders and 5,000 procedure changes annually by implementing workflow and electronic routing at its Browns Ferry facility. What is noteworthy about this case study is that it was a massive BPR project that succeeded. Nominating vendor is Identitech, Melbourne, FL., with TSW International of Atlanta, GA., as integrator. Silver Award, Workflow, North America

The University of Alberta’s (Edmonton, Alberta, Canada) largest academic interlibrary loan lending system filling 110,000 information requests annually and serving over fifty client institutions and tens of thousands of researchers throughout North America, uses workflow software to redesign its interlibrary loan (ILL) process and develop an innovative Internet document delivery services. Nominating vendor is Logical Software Solutions, Calverton, MD. Integrator is NSI Network Support Inc. Gold Award: Workflow, North America

The University of Central Florida (Orlando, FL.) with a student body of 26,000, is using innovative workflow applications in student applications (via Internet) student records, finance, accounting and personnel, making the campus one of the most technologically advanced in the country. What would previously have been back office processes are now directly accessible by customers via the Web. The nominating vendor is Mosaix Inc. of Alameda, CA. Merit Award: Workflow, North America

VELO Motor Accident Management Ltd. (Marlow, England) is the largest fleet accident management company in Europe, handling more than 120,000 fleet vehicles for over 400 top UK companies. VELO’s ClaimFlow system automated 29 business processes resulting in a 25 percent increase in productivity. Nominating vendor is Eastman Software, Inc., with integration by Relational Developments Limited. Silver Award: Imaging, Europe

Westinghouse Electric Company’s Energy Systems Business Unit (Monroeville, PA) has implemented an Information Delivery System to search for scanned nuclear power plant design documents and to archive completed work in accordance with Nuclear Regulatory Commission requirements. This case study is noteworthy for the way they implemented workflow and imaging on enterprise-wide basis, and also integrated with external suppliers and customers. Nominating vendor is FileNet Corporation, Costa Mesa, CA. Silver Award: Imaging, North America

The case studies of each winning corporation featured in Excellence in Practice Vol. II go into considerable detail regarding the issues of implementation. Readers can find out more about: