WHAT IS A WORKFLOW?
A workflow process is a predictable and repeatable set of tasks between two or more people or systems.
A workflow is a sequence of approvals and inputs where each task is dependent on the previous one being completed.
Workflows are one of two main parts of a process; the other is the form that captures the data to be processed. The form is the ‘What’ of a process and the workflow is the ‘How’.
In a manual workflow, data has to be passed back and forth between people. This could mean handing a paper form to someone, or sending an email. The sender must remember whom to send the data to and push it directly to them.
WHAT IS AN AUTOMATED WORKFLOW?
In an automated workflow, as soon as someone is finished with a task, the system knows exactly who it should go to next and takes care of transferring the data. It’s like a conveyer belt that goes around in a specific path and people just pick the tasks that has their name on it.
WHAT ARE THE ADVANTAGES OF AN AUTOMATED WORKFLOW?
A manual workflow is slow, prone to errors, often bottlenecked, difficult to measure, and lacks an audit trail
Automated workflows can also delegate many trivial jobs to machines so humans can be more involved in strategy and innovative projects. If you use cloud workflow tools, your processes can be blazing fast, globally accessible, and more secure than ever before.
HOW TO MODEL AN AUTOMATED WORKFLOW?
Workflow management is the process of digitally modelling the tasks in a workflow and creating the appropriate connections. Here are a few things to keep in mind as you model a workflow:
- Create Every Task in the Process: Some tasks might happen simultaneously and some might happen conditionally
- Define Task Owners: Each task should have one person who is responsible for giving input or approving
- Determine Permissions: Figure out what data a task owner needs in order to complete a job
- Set Deadlines: You can create deadlines for each task that include when notifications occur
HOW DO WORKFLOWS HELP WITH DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION?
Without automation, digital workflows are just replica of a paper trail. If you are looking to reap the benefits of digital transformation, make the shift away from manual, paper-based workflows to an automated world.
Businesses that leverage automated workflows achieve:
- Greater agility in their operation capacities
- Customer-centric intelligence in their strategies
- Increased efficiency and innovation
