Success story
Optimizing Real Estate Management Processes: Reducing requests processing time from 2 weeks to 2 hours
ZKB chose Flowable as the best solution for optimizing real estate management processes. By creating the new Project and Loan Application Process Workflow using Flowable Work, ZKB reduced the request processing time from two weeks to only two hours.
The Zürcher Kantonalbank (ZKB) is the biggest cantonal bank in Switzerland. Its Real Estate Asset Management division is one of the largest Swiss real estate players, offering all institutional asset management services for financial service providers, companies, foundations, and pension funds.
A request that took 2 weeks to be approved, now takes 2 hours. It’s really enjoyable working like this.
Fridolin Müller, Specialist Finance & Services Real Estate
ZKB has chosen Flowable as the best solution for optimizing real estate management processes. A new workflow should provide a cohesive interface for Asset Managers to create real estate project and loan requests, while internally, it should improve information management and processing time of requests.
By creating the new Project and Loan Application Process Workflow using Flowable Work, ZKB reduced the request processing time from two weeks to only two hours.
Quick time to market thanks to open architecture and model-driven capabilities
Looking at a potential solution to optimize and increase the efficiency of the processes in place, ZKB had three priorities:
Increase transparency and quality assurance: Special emphasis was put on optimizing and unifying the central management system so that all information is internally accessible to all relevant parties. Additional capabilities to assign and track tasks should promote transparency while reducing processing time.
Provide a user-friendly and intuitive interface: Externally, a new interface should make the project and loan application process more straightforward for property managers. Internally, a new interface should increase communication between the different parties involved in the process, making it easier for them to solve requests on time.
Fast time to market: ZKB had a strict timeline for rolling out the new workflow and was therefore looking for a solution that could be integrated into their already existing technological landscape.
ZKB evaluated 4 competitors and decided on Flowable Work as the right solution because of three main aspects:
Flowable’s open architecture based on REST-Interface provides the necessary flexibility to easily integrate it into the already existing technology landscape
Flowable's model-driven capabilities enable rapid development and rollout of a new workflow. In addition to the case and process models, Flowable offers a wide range of other low-code modeling options. These can be combined and reused to create, merge and customize applications.
Flowable’s support in migration, development, and deployment of new workflows means additional expertise and less room for mistakes
Flowable’s open architecture, combined with its model-driven capabilities provided the right premise for ZKB to go live with the new workflow in only 6 months.
Reducing request processing time from 2 weeks to 2 hours
The entire process, from creating to accepting and processing or rejecting requests, is now automated. Once a project or loan request is submitted, it goes through different clearly defined and tracked steps within the workflow.
A significant improvement is that now all process steps communicate with each other: throughout the workflow, responsibilities and next steps are always clear. Information is centralized, and all respective parties have access. Project managers can now create and visualize data in dashboards, and additional commenting and chat functions allow the team to give transparent feedback.
Overall, automating processes end-to-end has increased transparency and freed up project managers, who can now work more efficiently. The new Project and Loan Application Process Workflow led to a reduction in request processing time from 2 weeks to 2 hours. It had a significant impact on quality management thanks to better traceability and transparency.
Flowable Work’s BPMN, CMMN, and DMN capabilities were crucial for the project's success. The platform has all the right capabilities and the flexibility to address our needs. To us, it was also important to have the support of the Flowable development team.
Daniel Wymann, Project Manager ZKB AM RE
From idea to a live application in only 6 months
ZKB had a strict schedule for optimizing its processes. Short time to market was possible with Flowable’s ease of use and model-driven capabilities. The new workflow went live in only 6 months.
Thanks to Flowable's out-of-the-box functions, long-running ZKB process instances can also be migrated to the latest model version, enabling the continuous development and updating of the case models.
A look into the future
Following the successful implementation of the new Project and Loan Application Process Workflow, ZKB will continuously digitalize other business processes with Flowable Work.
In the meantime, two other application processes have already been implemented with Flowable and further optimization is planned for the coming year.
