IBM DB2 Document Manager with IBM Records Manager Solution Guide

470 IBM DB2 Document Manager with IBM Records Manager Solution Guide

A.1 Introduction

The case study involves a hypothetical company, ZXY Technologies. It sells

hardware, software, and services to its clients. ZXY Technologies needs an

enterprise wide, document management solution to help the company with the

proposal creation processes and keep track of all the correspondence related to

the proposals. All the issued proposals also need to be maintained as corporate

records. ZXY Technologies needs the solution to be able to support records

management.

We use the case study to provide concrete planning and design examples that

you can use to plan and design your solution. In addition, we use the case study

to show you the practical steps in implementing a Document Manager solution

configured with Records Manager options.

A.2 Requirements

ZXY Technologies needs an enterprise wide, document management solution to

help the company with the

proposal creation processes and keep track of all the

correspondence related to the proposals.

ZXY Technologies has requirements for the following document types:

򐂰 Proposals

򐂰 Correspondence

򐂰 Records and confidential documents

A.2.1 Proposals

Every month, ZXY Technologies handles hundreds of requests for proposals

from its clients.

Proposals are commonly used both to request information and to submit

information.

Proposal requests are issued by customers requesting pricing or

product information and

proposal responses are issued by the ZXY Technologies

company providing pricing or product information.

Proposals requests are sources of unstructured data. They contain information

critical to a project or critical to serving a customer. They may come in the form of

an e-mail, phone call, fax, or a business letter.

With

proposal responses, ZXY Technologies delivers required information to

customers based on proposal requests. There are multiple steps in the proposal

Appendix A. Case study 471

(response) creation process – response creation, review, approval, and delivery

to the customers.

ZXY Technologies needs a solution to manage all documents involved in the

proposal creation process from end-to-end. This includes managing documents

from the beginning, when the requests for proposals arrive from customers as

e-mails, faxes, or correspondence, until the end, when the formal proposals are

delivered to the customers.

The company has different departments that deal with different types of

proposals.

There are three types of proposals:

򐂰 Sales proposals: These are proposals related to selling hardware and

software to external customers. They are created by salespeople and are

delivered to customers.

򐂰 Services proposals: These are proposals related to selling services to

external customers. They are created by consultants and are delivered to

customers.

򐂰 Marketing proposals: These are proposals related to marketing campaigns for

the ZXY Technologies. They are created by marketing people and are

delivered to internal clients within the company.

The ZXY Technologies wants to manage different proposals with separate

templates, so that each department is responsible for the final proposal delivery.

It also wants a system that can automatically send e-mails to people who need to

review or approve the proposals, to accelerate the entire proposal creation

process.

Generally, the proposal process goes through the following business steps:

1. The external or internal client sends a request for proposal.

2. The sales, consultant, or marketing people create a proposal using a

predefined proposal template. The proposal creator then sends the proposal

for review.

3. The reviewers are the department managers and financial people that control

the proposal before it goes to the approved state.

4. Depending on the type of the proposal, usually, the manager of the

department is responsible to finally approve or reject the proposal.

5. If approved, the formal proposal is sent to the external or internal customer.