AboutUI

iPhones, Faxes and BPM

Last week the Apple iPhone finally made “ali’yah” and is now available for sell in Israel. Of course, all the early adopters already had iPhones they brought from overseas, but that’s besides the point. The point is that all the banks, newspapers and media channels are stampeding to get an “iPhone application”. If only we have an iPhone application to our bank before the other guys have it, everything would be good, they say. My bank is no different and in the last months they have made giant steps in the digital arena – a really good mobile site (for us un-cool Blackberry users), twitter presence (@leumidigital) and even Video chats with your banker via cellular.

Leumi's iPhone App

All this is fine and dandy, until you actually need to get some money out of them. I happened to require a hefty amount of money this morning (this rugged look doesn’t come for free, you know), which means I needed a cashiers check. The following flow occurred:

1. I called the bank and told them I need the check.
2. They asked me to fax them the request with a manual signature.
3. I wrote a request in Word, printed it, signed it and faxed it to them.
4. I called again. They confirmed getting the fax.
5. They printed a new form, detailing my request, signed by a manager.
6. They faxed the signed request to the physical branch where the cashier actually sits.
7. They faxed it again (hey – the branch has 3 fax machines).
8. The cashier entered the details on her terminal (same details I gave over the phone about 7 steps ago), notified me on the commission.
9. The cashier printed another 2 pages – one where I sign that I agree to the commission the other is my receipt for the commission.
10. The cashier went to the manger (with a hefty stack of papers) to get his approval and signature.
11. Armed with the signature and stack of papers – the cashier came back to start processing my request (checking that I actually have the funds to back it up, etc.)
12. I got my check.

Now imagine if the bank had taken a long hard look at its process and simply employed some BPM system to streamline it… it should have looked like this:

1. I call the bank and request the check.
2. Bank checks that I have the funds, a notification is sent to the manger which gets it in an inbox and approves.
3. Manager approval is kept on file for the cashier to view.
4. Based on that approval she prints the check.
5. I get my check.

In general, I fail to understand the fixation so many organizations still have on a ‘paper trail’ all these faxes and manual signatures. Not only is this not environment friendly, this simply makes all processes mind-boggingly cumbersome and failure prone (e.g. faxing the authorization to the wrong fax machine in the branch). But hey – its so much sexier to launch an iPhone application and renovate your processes.