Overview
What makes an organization efficient? Ask an enterprise resource planning (ERP) consultant, and you’ll likely hear many examples about how they help organizations integrate employees and corporate teams into centralized systems. Fortunately, we already have a very efficient ERP partner that supports our daily management processes. However, this doesn’t stop us from innovating ways to streamline our operations further. One area we noticed that could benefit from improvements is the onboarding/offboarding of employees. Given the dynamic nature of this process, we needed to have a system in place that is reliable, efficient, and agile. While we’re not saying that we didn’t have a process in place, the one we did have wasn’t as robust as we needed it to be—something we’ll be discussing in this case study.
The Challenge
Employees come and go, and like all organizations, we keep track of incoming and outgoing employees to ensure they are fully compliant with entry/exit requirements. Previously, we relied on a basic Excel form to manage work-related matters such as pending leaves, signed joining documents, background checks, no-obligation certificate statuses, and submitted timesheets, among others. Based on these submissions, the compliance team would either provide or revoke access to the offshore research centers. The process was largely automated using VBA coding, which populated necessary details remotely from an SQL server and sent an email to the compliance team upon submission.
This may seem simple, but the process had several shortcomings. For example, the same form was used for onboarding and offboarding and thus featured fields pertaining to both tasks, which at times led to unforced errors. The VBA macros used to retrieve data from a remote database were also slow and struggled with large datasets. Users would complain that the Excel form was prone to a range of issues from unresponsive clicks to crashing. These challenges were compounded by a visually unappealing and non-user-friendly interface.
Our Solution
Our proposed solution focused on making the process more user-friendly by migrating the existing processes to a newly developed desktop application based on web technologies like React and ASP.NET. Using a template in Visual Studio, a project can be created for single-page apps utilizing JavaScript frameworks such as React library for the user interface and ASP.NET Core project for the backend. This project was developed with the assistance of our in-house AI-tool, EVS GPT, which generated the required C# and JavaScript codes through specific prompts, allowing seamless integration with the existing codebase.
The end result was a web-based application that can be installed locally or accessed from a shared folder. This app entirely replaced the previous Excel-based process by allowing users to select tasks from a dropdown list, ensuring that only relevant fields appear for the selected task. For example, to onboard a new joiner, users can select “onboarding” from the dropdown list, and only the fields related to that process will be displayed—eliminating confusion and reducing errors caused by irrelevant fields. The application, available as an easy-to-install package available to all Evalueserve employees, features an intuitive, user-friendly interface and clearly defined objectives for each task.
The main interface of the application can be seen in the following snippets.
Business Impact
User-Friendly Interface Leaves No Room for Unforced Errors: We view our solution as a major step-up from the original Excel-based process, which could now appear outdated in comparison to the user-friendly interface of the new desktop application. This solution eliminates issues such as slowness, Excel crashes, and unforced errors caused by jumbled fields appearing on the Excel sheet corresponding to different tasks. The new application is intuitive and doesn’t require any formal training. Users can easily select tasks, fill out required fields, and proceed without needing to navigate a standard operating procedure or populate irrelevant fields, unlike the original Excel-based process.
Efficiency Gains: The whole onboarding/offboarding task can now be completed in three to five minutes with maximum efficiency and minimal errors, whereas the original Excel file was prone to errors and sometimes led to full crashes, requiring up to 15 minutes to complete the task, even under ideal conditions. This improvement translates into efficiency gains of up to 70%.
Limitations
Teams looking to implement similar solutions should keep the following in mind:
- Since the tool is built on React and ASP.NET, debugging or troubleshooting will take longer than VBA macros, as they are simpler, while making changes to the source codes of the app would take longer due to their complexity. Additionally, version incompatibilities in development tools like .NET or JavaScript runtimes can delay progress and complicate error resolution.
- The effectiveness of this tool is contingent upon the maintenance and accuracy of the underlying database. Any issues or discrepancies within the database will directly impact the tool’s performance. Therefore, maintaining database integrity is crucial for optimal functionality.
Talk to One of Our Experts
Get in touch today to find out about how Evalueserve can help you improve your processes, making you better, faster and more efficient.
Overview & Impact
Efficient processes are key to organizational success, especially in dynamic workflows like employee onboarding and offboarding. While our ERP system effectively manages core operations, our Excel-based process faced challenges such as inefficiency, slowness, and errors. To address this, we developed a modern, agile, and user-friendly web application that redefined our approach.
Efficiency Gains
Zero error
Authors
Alberto Iturra
Senior Research Lead
Pablo de la Barra
Lead Analyst
Sergio Lillo
Analyst
Felipe Solis
Analyst