Allwyn helps Amtrak Comply FRA Regulatory Requirements providing granular visibility into Funds and Expenses

Business Problem

Amtrak was required to comply with Federal Railroad Administration RegulatoryRequirements by providing granular visibility of the Amtrak’s Projects and underlyingexpense costs. Initially, the Funds Management process was performed manually throughExcel and emails and provided visibility on a project level rather than expense level.

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Appian Solution

Allwyn’s Appian Solution for Amtrak’s Funds Management started as a 4-months Proof ofConcept and later expanded for Enterprise-wide adoption. Our consultants organizedbrainstorming sessions with the Amtrak SMEs to understand the technical implication ofthe FRA regulatory requirements which eventually translated into business, functional, andoperational requirements for the project. We performed Business Case Analysis tounderstand the complexity of automation rules for allocation of expenses to funds, monthlyworkflows and management of expense lifecycle. Based on the gathered requirements, wedeveloped a Funds Management System with a rules engine in Appian pulling in Expenseand Forecast Data from SAP ECC through APIs, performing automation of expenseallocation to funds and providing detailed expense reports for individual projects throughSAP BPC. In addition, we also enhanced the reports and ran validations on the rules toidentify issues early ahead in time.

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Results

  • Helped Amtrak comply with FRA Regulatory Requirements and provided granular visibility with the ability to track Million Dollars of expenses
  • Amtrak’s Grants Team gained visibility of the project expenses and received the ability to keep a check and also put limits to funds.
  • As part of the current Sprint, we are working on the following enhancements

                 - Simplification of the Year-end close-out process.

                  - Build more features for adjusting past expenses and not just current expenses.

                 - Ability to build rules from the front end and not just the back end.

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“We appreciate your support (from project management, requirements todeployment) and the great partnership to deliver this capability to the Amtrak GrantsManagement team in a timely fashion. This process was new to a lot of you on howto deliver technology and the partnership needed, but you did it! Thank you for yourpatience, collaboration and each person accepting and taking ownership of theirrole.”

Amtrak Leadership –