CSE498, Collaborative Design, Spring 2011
Computer Science and Engineering
Michigan State University

Money is the lifeblood of every company. Every corporate officer and board member has an obligation to the stockholders to ensure that money is being used responsibly.

The Dow Chemical Company currently has a process in place to approve or reject spending requests. For every department in the company, there is a clearly defined chain of approval through which all material spending requests must be routed. Once every person in the chain approves the request, the funding is provided

One of the purposes of technology is to improve the quality of our lives by making certain tasks easier. With that idea in mind, we set out to build a system to handle the existing approval process automatically. Our software notifies the people involved in the approval process by email when a new request is created. It also routes the request to each individual in the appropriate order.

Our Business Approval System also allows each approver in the chain to enter comments, and all of the people in the process can review them and add their own. A historical record of all requests is maintained.

In the fast-paced modern business environment, people need to be able to access the software from a variety of devices, from a PC or laptop to an iPad or smartphone. Our software is able to be used from any of those devices to facilitate that lifestyle.