How Duke-NUS Medical School automated time-consuming administrative processes

Duke-NUS Medical School is a graduate medical school in Singapore. This collaboration between Duke University in the United States and the National University of Singapore was set up in 2005.

Once the required user data was populated in Active Directory, the back-end integration was done with ease. The front-end development was also relatively swift and manageable. We have started off with forms from our HR department; we will now extend the form automation to other departments to reap the same benefits.

In 2018, Duke-NUS embarked on a project to select a suitable workflow tool to automate some of its time-consuming administrative processes; these included physical applications for childcare and parental leave. The tool needed to cope with potentially high volumes of forms together with integrations to back-office systems for authentication and record-keeping. ​

After a period of in-depth testing, the school selected WorkflowGen process automation solution from Advantys, based in Canada. WorkflowGen has been implemented by many other universities, and offers a combination of strong functionalities and relatively low-code development out of the box.

Following the selection, selected IT staff at Duke-NUS were trained by Office Information Australia (Regional Distributor) in Singapore before development and testing commenced.

Future form implementations are also expected to be faster, thanks to saved components and pre-existing web parts. Future functionalities to explore will include deployment on mobile devices with Remote Approval, Quick Mass Approval and data collation features, along with other readily available reporting features. There are also plans to train more IT staff to use the tool as the volume of form automation increases.

Read the OIA case study.