Cern's workflow secret out

Cern, the company that developed the foundations of the World Wide Web, has sold its internally developed intranet-based workflow software to Transacsys in a deal worth £400,000.

Transacsys will benefit from 10 years of development within the international physics laboratory in Geneva and will shape the e-procurement workflow system into a commercial product, to go on sale in September.

Existing enterprise resource planning or workflow systems focus on automating vertical core processes or specific tasks. But they fail to apply a holistic view or streamline non-core administrative tasks which hamper internal transaction efficiency.

Cern's EDH system, which will be branded Permissioning by Transacsys, takes a 'horizontal' approach through the organisation and combines separate systems to electronically streamline internal transactions. It can be used on top of existing procurement, customer relationship management or partner software.

For example, the internal purchase order system ties into the human resource system to redirect workflow if someone's boss is out of the office. Even when people forget to update absence schedules, effective fail-over procedures protect orders from getting lost in the system by pushing it electronically to a higher level of authorisation.

Derek Mathieson, co-developer of EDH, said he first looked at company-wide communications and worked it out from there.

Robert Cailliau, Cern's head of web communications, said that the company defined a procurement protocol over the web to handle its rule system. As a user, he was grateful not to have to sign papers any more and said EDH fail-over rules made the system efficient.

"I was once told off for not noting my absence - the system sent approval on to my superior," he said smiling. "If the plug was pulled on the software, Cern would grind to a halt."

How Cern uses EDH

• Used across 49 countries
• 1200 active users per day
• 150,000 procedures per year
• 93 per cent of internal purchases covered in less than 24 hours - five hits per second on the website
• Over 6000 users.