BRITISH COLUMBIA SECURITIES COMMISSION USING BIZFLOW TO MANAGE CHANGES MANDATED BY SECURITIES ACT

Independent Provincial Government Agency to See Dramatic Improvement of Work in Progress Tracking; Moving to Manage 45 Complex Processes with BizFlow

8.November.04 - VIENNA, VA - HandySoft Global Corporation, a leading provider of business process management (BPM) solutions, today announced that the British Columbia Securities Commission (BCSC) in Canada has selected BizFlow® to manage 45 different complex processes. As an important part of this BPM initiative, the BCSC plans to manage significant changes to the vetting and approval processes of filings made by public companies, as mandated by British Columbia’s new Securities Act, which goes into effect by the end of November 2004. Currently utilizing HandySoft’s award-winning BPM platform to manage work in progress tracking and automate many of its associated sub-processes, the BCSC has seen reductions in the staff time required to handle paper documents. As well, information about active and historical processes is shared now online with staff across the BCSC’s divisions in real time.

“The new Securities Act is leading to process and systems changes at the BCSC,” said Loring Bohach, Project Leader at the BCSC. “Process improvement is everyone’s objective here, and with BizFlow we can implement and adapt processes much quicker and easier than before. For example, we’ve been able to change the prospectus review process to have work routed automatically. Our review and approval process is streamlined, with fewer errors from re-keying data and delays from hunting down paper files. BizFlow empowers end users to manage their own workloads effectively to ensure optimal service levels.”

As an independent provincial government agency whose mission is to protect and promote the public interest by regulating trading in securities, the BCSC oversees a variety of different regulatory processes, including monitoring financial disclosure documents and applications for initial public offerings (IPOs). Prior to selecting BizFlow, each of the BCSC’s various departments developed their own tools to track their work, making it almost impossible to have an agency-wide view of a work process. Additionally, manual routing of paper documents made it impossible to share background information once a document was being processed.

“As we mapped our processes in preparation for managing them with BPM software, we found that although we are a relatively small organization, compliance with provincial regulations and national guidelines makes our processes very intricate, and therefore we needed a solution that could handle this complexity,” Mr. Bohach added. “BizFlow’s client-based licensing model enabled us to get an incredibly robust solution without having to go to a large seat count. Furthermore, BizFlow’s seamless integration with our existing Hummingbird document management system was critical to our selection of their BPM platform.”

Moving to automate and/or manage 45 processes through BizFlow, the BCSC will build repetitive, non-essential action steps into automated processes, working in conjunction with the agency’s document management system to route documents to parties in relevant divisions. BizFlow will also help the BCSC make business decisions, such as automatically recommending future regulatory oversight schedules for securities market participants based objectively on risk factors captured during process workflows.

The BCSC joins a growing list of international government agencies turning to HandySoft to support important e-government and regulatory compliance initiatives. In addition to more than 40 federal government clients in the US, as well as other government clients in Asia, HandySoft also works with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO). DFO uses BizFlow to manage and streamline the flow of departmental correspondence, improving constituent service and reducing workload and cycle times by 40 percent.

"Our BPM technology is not only helping provide easier access and integration to government information residing in disparate legacy systems, but it is also automating critical government processes and institutionalizing best practices across government agencies to meet important objectives," said Stuart Claggett, Chief Operating Officer of HandySoft Global. “With most government procedures being driven by laws and regulations, government agencies need to adopt new technology solutions to run their internal operations more efficiently and cost-effectively. Furthermore, as compliance and risk mitigation continue to become more important to government agencies, we are leveraging our expertise working with Global 500 companies in these areas to continue generating strong government sales.”

“As we implement BizFlow solutions in North America and Europe for government agencies, financial services companies, as well as businesses in other industries, we have found one thing in common: a desire to leverage BizFlow to achieve larger corporate/government objectives,” said Paul McGovern, President of Database Republic, one of the leading global implementers of BizFlow solutions. “BizFlow enables IT to serve directly the needs of the business people and allows them to easily map-out their own processes. For end users, their involvement in the business processes occurs through a simple browser interface.”