Intelligent Systems Report € March € 1996 € Volume 13 € No. 3

HP uses agents to reduce paperwork

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Hewlett-Packard's US Field Service Operations Group (USFO) (Atlanta, Ga.) has developed a paperless wage review (PWR) system using intelligent agents to deal with quarterly reviews of its 11,000 employees. The solution was made possible by implementing Electronic Workforce agent-based software from Edify Corp. (Santa Clara, Calif.)

The wage review information is processed in six steps at several geographic locations, including local offices in Atlanta and California. Every quarter the process takes a full month to complete, puts pressure on the managers, and is error-prone. USFO's task was to cut the paper flow, reduce errors and save managerial time.

"The goals," said Cindy Nelson, operations service center manager, "were to allow managers a greater window of time to evaluate wage information -- more than just one week -- and to have them spend less time pushing the paper that accompanied the process." To that end, HP USFO had a number of important requirements: The company wanted a solution that would easily integrate with the system its managers already had available on their desktops, namely e-mail and phones. Furthermore, the company did not want to require its 1,600 managers to get additional software or learn something new. The solution, Nelson explained, needed to be within their current technology and their current skill set.

Previously, the office in Atlanta would send hardcopy forms containing employee wage data and projected increases to its 1,600 first-level managers in field offices. The managers would add information to the forms and forward them to second-level managers by interoffice mail, hand delivery or express mail.

Second-level managers would approve the forms (often after discussing them with first-level managers), and then forward them to area offices. Staff members would key the data into the personnel department's data processing system for transmission to corporate personnel in California.

Corporate personnel would then approve the forms and send final wage increase information back to Atlanta, where wage increase notices would be sent out to the first-line managers. Finally, the first-line managers would tell their employees about their increases. The process consumed a large amount of its managers' time. Because of re-keying and the use of hardcopy forms, errors were a constant possibility. USFO was determined to reduce the burden on its managers.

USFO chose Electronic Workforce to ease the time constraints on its managers because it is an integrated computer-telephony solution, including e-mail integration, interactive voice response and fax capability. HP's Personnel Technologies team used the graphical Agent Trainer application creation tool to speed the development of its own custom Paperless Wage Review (PWR) system.

In USFO's system, the intelligent agent software resides on a PC server on the HP network. It lets USFO managers and personnel access employee data from both the personnel and e-mail databases, drive e-mail communications, and initiate phone and fax transactions through the telecommunications network.

Using software agents, PWR tracks employee review dates and automatically initiates the wage review process. It sends wage review forms to first-level managers by e-mail or fax every quarter, on the appropriate date. Managers have up to four weeks to enter the approval data by touchtone phone, and they can do it from the office, from their homes, or while they're on the road. (Touchtone approval requires PIN identification.) Wage forms distributed by fax can be sent to a manager's secure fax location.

When the first-level manager sends initial approval, PWR automatically sends the forms by e-mail to second-level managers, who also use touchtone input. PWR automatically confirms to managers that the increase has been approved, and that wage increase slips will be sent on the appropriate date.

When an increase has final approval, PWR takes over again to conclude the process. It automatically loads the data into the personnel database and sends a confirmation slip to the first-level manager.

According to Nelson, HP has experienced dramatic improvements in its wage review process. "PWR speeds up all the administrative tasks, eliminates paper-pushing, and improves the accuracy of our information throughout the entire process," she said. The company has eliminated the expense of express shipping 20,000 forms throughout the country, and allowed its managers more time to focus on their employees, rather than on a paper chase.