A visit to Kinko's

An interesting story and how an idea surged. A couple of days ago I had to go to Kinko’s for printing some pricing and marketing material for a customer I was going to visit the next day. I asked for normal color printing with a special paper, something that made it look good. This was in kind of a rush mode. I was on the trip and visiting the client was a pure coincidence.

When the person in the front desk took my order, he took out the huge form (it looks something like a poster for some movie or concert) and he fills it out with my order request. I couldn't understand anything he was writing but I know there are a bunch of fields in the form. He entered the color preference, the paper type, the number of copies, my name, address and phone number. After finishing, he marks every field in the form with a green highlighter (I still don't know why is this). Then he takes the form and puts it in sealed bag (like a huge Ziploc) and then calls somebody in the background to handle the new request.

First, nobody answered. He didn't know who was free to work and who was working with something (and nobody was paying attention to him either). Then he needed to copy my PDF files to the machine where the printing was going to be done. He didn't remember the files I just told him to print so I had to go back and point him the files I wanted. I noticed that with every printing work they have, they create a folder with the customer name. Inside the folder they create three more folders: Original, Process, and Final. Then he placed my files in the original folder. I think the folders mark the workflow that needs to be followed for printing. I suppose it goes something like this: they first open the files in the original folder, then edit them with some program for best printing (still haven't figured out what they edit; documents always have this blank border and they say it's impossible to take it out). Then they put the edited files in the final folder.

After copying and filling the request and everything was done, he told me the estimated time that everything will be ready and that’s it, ready.

When I got out I started thinking (in critique mode) the whole process. I said why they haven’t done something more automatic for handling these request and assignment. Maybe they would only need one person in the front taking the requests and something behind prepares the environment of work and assigns the right person in the back.

Using a workflow application would help them great automating the manual process. And how they can do that? I came with something simple for the problem.

First I though the best way to port the paper forms to an electronic form was InfoPath. In InfoPath you have the ability to create sections inside the form and digitally signed them preventing these sections to be tampered (we don’t need anymore the plastic Ziploc bag for protecting the form). One issue resolved.

In InfoPath you can define an attachment field that allows you to attach a file to the form. You can attach as many files as needed and they traveled inside the form always. Now you can take the files needed for the work and attach them to request. They are never loss and you just have to ask for them one time. Another issue solved.

The form is going to be electronic in first place. You can publish it to a SharePoint site for example and have a central repository form them, allowing searching and indexing. This is not an issue, but maybe would be a great add on.

And now for the workflow part. A simple process can be made for handling the request form. You would have the start activity with permissions for only the front desk person to start the process. Security. Then a second activity for handling the input request form.

As an improvement, we could create a web service that generates a unique number for the request. This can be the second activity in the process. The third activity would be to assign this number to a field in the form. Next?

The next thing we can do is actually create another web service that creates the folders they need for processing the files. We don’t need the first folder, the Original folder, because the original files are already attached to the form. The web service would only need to create the other two: Process and Final. A good improvement would be to create them directly in SharePoint and have a central repository for them.

The most important step would be the assignment of the request to one of the back office personnel that actually executes the job. I though the best way to do this was to use the workload feature. I could specify the personnel available for this and assign requests on a one by one basis or a least busy basis. Then let the software manage the work queue. Maybe every personnel in the back office can have like a Pocket PC and they can receive their tasks and immediately know their new assignments.

The final step would be to send an email to the front desk person notifying that the job was finished. An improvement here we could consider is asking the customer for his email and place it in the form. Then we can put another activity in the process for sending an email to the client saying that his job is finished (customer service improvement!!).

Now the whole process is automated. Errors in the process will be far less. Security in the form cannot be compromised. And we guarantee that every back office personnel are receiving their tasks in a balanced way. The next phase for this would be to make another web service for saving the information in the form to a database table for future statistics and analysis.

A major thing? To simply enabled Procx to receive the form requests via email and have the form publish to the Internet. I can fill the form myself from my house and I only have to leave to actually pickup the final work after I have received the notification. A simple step towards the electronic enterprise. An example of how the process will look like is on the right.