Friday 8 July 2011

Using Workflow and Rules Engines For Leasing Applications

Meeting the software needs of the leasing industry is no easy task, as every change in legal requirements, market forces and strategy gives rise to a number of challenges.
Finance companies are demanding innovative software products that are ahead of the market, such as solutions that enable users to change their business processes without time or financial constraints. Although these demands are part of a greater paradigm shift in the leasing industry, using workflow and Rules Engine can help software vendors meet some of these needs.

He we discusses how leasing software can be made flexible and adaptable to constantly changing market needs by using workflow and a Rules Engine in conjunction.  

Leasing Process  
Together, a Rules Engine and workflow can be used to automate the conditional workflow processes of the system, as well as the movement of items between different nodes. This setup can help in managing the life cycle of leasing deals. It can also isolate the bulk of the application code from changes in the life cycle of deals.  

Approval Process  
The approval process for leasing deals involves approval at various levels. The type and number of levels can vary from time to time and from customer to customer. A combination of Rules Engine and workflow can be used to define the approval process for the deals so that the sequence of approvals can be governed.  

Leasing Documents  
The importance of tracking documents cannot be undermined in leasing. Required documents for a lease may vary based on entities like vendor, equipment and approval level. In such cases, Rules Engine can be configured and used to specify the required and optional documents for various entities.  

Escalation and Notifications  
User actions in leasing software might trigger a notification or even lead to an escalation in certain cases. Workflow provides a convenient way of sending notifications to the users based on different actions.

Dynamic User Interface and Authorization  
It is typical for applications to have different categories of users and thus a different user interface for each of them. For example, due to security reasons, some information may be hidden from one category of users and available to another. Such dynamic user interfaces can be dynamically configured through rules.  

Pricing Calculations  
In almost all financial applications (including leasing), it is common that calculations
(e.g., EMI calculations, subsidy calculations, tax calculations, etc.) may be different for different vendors, dealers and locales. Rules provide an easy mechanism to implement
such scenarios.

Also read on:  Ecommerce solutions, Mobile application development, Product engineering services, Saas application development
  

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