Handling complex processes quickly and accurately is something the British Columbia Securities Commission (BCSC) has to accomplish on a daily — even hourly — basis.
Speed, precision, process integration, and ease of use are not optional extras for the provincial government agency, but are essential to fulfilling its mandate of “promoting public interest by regulating trading in securities.”
That explains why the officials at BCSC are so thrilled about their new business process improvement technology based on BizFlow, a software tool that automates workflow and collaboration.
The new technology platform, BCSC says, allows it to manage, automate and accelerate an array of complex processes — up to 45 of them. These capabilities, in turn, are expected to dramatically reduce staff time required to handle paper documents, simplify processes, save labour, and enhance efficiency.
All these improvements are significant in view of expected changes to the province’s Securities Act. (A new Securities Act was supposed to go into effect this month in B.C., but has been deferred). Once passed, the legislation will introduce several changes to vetting and approval processes of filings made by public companies.
BCSC says the new BizFlow technology from Vienna, Va.-based HandySoft Global Corp. enables it to comply with these changes.
Loring Bohach, a project leader at BCSC, explains how.
“We’ve been able to change the prospectus review process to have work routed automatically. Our review and approval process is now streamlined with fewer errors from re-keying data or hunting down paper files.”
Bohach said the new technology — by empowering end users to manage their own workloads effectively — also improves service levels.
In addition to HandySoft’s business process management (BPM) technology, BCSC also uses a Hummingbird Ltd. document management system. The seamless integration between the two platforms was a crucial factor in the selection of BizFlow, said Bohach.
BCSC has replaced its former discrete and disjointed processes — where each department used different tools to track work — with a centralized system that automates non-essential, repetitive steps and routes documents to individuals or groups in relevant divisions.
The new BizFlow technology provides BCSC with an agency-wide view of work processes.
According to a HandySoft release, the new BizFlow technology also offers business intelligence and decision-making functionality.
“(It) will also help BCSC…automatically recommend future regulatory oversight schedules for securities market participants based on risk factors captured during process workflows,” the release says.