Grain Inspection, Packers & Stockyards Administration



Customer Overview GIPSA's Packers and Stockyards Program (P&SP) promotes fair business practices and competitive environments to market livestock, meat, and poultry through its oversight activities, including monitoring programs, reviews, and investigations.
Needs GIPSA needed a document management and workflow module to manage its primary business processes. The system needed to provide case management for each entity-related oversight activity. The system needed to capture and store paper documents, electronic documents and faxes. Users needed easy document search and retrieval and reporting capabilities.
Solution

QFlow implemented a customized business processing application. The GIPSA module automates the following business processes: Registration and Bonding, Regulatory Activity, Investigation, Enforcement, Financial Instrument Termination, and Annual Report processing.

The GIPSA module stores and routes business documents received by GIPSA PS&S. Each business document is scanned, indexed and placed in a work folder. Based on the document type and the entity, the system identifies the business transaction (process) to be performed.

The system initiates and manages the workflow for the business transaction. It routes the work folder to each assigned employee to perform their task. Users can place a work folder on-hold awaiting follow-up documents or actions. Upon receipt of documents, hold period expiration or completion of certain actions, the system will take the work folder off hold and route it to the correct user to process.

When all tasks are completed, the work folder is closed. Depending on certain outcomes, the system may automatically initiate a follow-on business process. In this situation, the system creates a new work folder, populates the data fields and routes it for processing.

Users can search for and view Work folders and documents with a simple query screen. Users can easily see a list of all business transactions and documents for an entity. The application was moved into production in January 2009.
Benefits Processors don't need to manually track progress of work. The system keeps track of deadlines and provides tickler follow-up reminders. Work tasks are organized in work inboxes by task type, entity and due date. Paper documents and faxes are automatically stored in the system. Processors have electronic access to all work folders and documents for a regulated entity. The system automatically routes work folders to users in distributed locations according to the work process. A document template library makes it easy for users to find standard documents and templates.
Services Provided QFlow consultants designed, developed and implemented the GIPSA workflow and document management application within USDA's ECM architecture framework. QFlow has continued to provide application enhancements, upgrades, system maintenance and technical support services.
Technical − Oracle Stellent Universal Content Manager;
− Oracle Universal Records Manager;
− Kofax Ascent Capture, Ascent Capture Internet Server, and PDF Image+Text;
− IBM WebSphere;
− Oracle 9i;
− Java J2EE; and
− Spicer ViewCafe
− Spicer Image-a-X
− J2EE Application