“Good management is the skill of making problems so engrossing and their solutions so productive that everyone wants to get to work and deal with them.”
Sound familiar? Have you ever heard of workflow management? What is that? What are its benefits? Remain calm! In this brief guide, we’ll cover them all on workflow management. Let’s get started.
Running a company isn’t simple, and every business manager and owner will affirm that. Thankfully, there are now solutions available that may make any project or process simpler.; one of which is Workflow Management. In today’s economy, workflow management tools and systems are non-negotiable. This article is for every manager needing to improve their productivity and workflows.
Of course, if there is one thing that can transform a firm completely, it would be workflow management. Effective workflow management helps a company raise its productivity, streamline processes, and save money.
Workflow- what it is?
A workflow is a structured set of tasks created for getting your stuff done.
Think of workflows like adding ingredients to a recipe. For fruitful outcomes, you must know what ingredients must be added to the recipe. But, in addition to the list of activities, you also need to know the directions to get everything done.
If the workflow is like ingredients in a recipe, then workflow management is the set of directions to get everything done.
Components of Workflow
Generally, workflow is the sum of three basic components: Predetermined steps, Stakeholders, and Conditions.
Predetermined steps
Steps are workflow’s predefined structure of tasks. They make clear what occurs at each stage of the workflow, up until the terminus. Depending on the workflow, a step may be automated or manual.
Workflow steps might be either linear, branching, or both.
Stakeholders
Stakeholders are the people who are in charge of completing particular tasks within the workflow. Stakeholders might be allocated to a single step, a set of steps, or the entire workflow.
Some workflows are automated, which reduces the involvement of stakeholders. Stakeholders only participate in the workflow under particular circumstances or when issues arise.
Conditions
Conditions are the workflow rules that decide when a specific step is finalized and what step to be done next. Conditions are helpful for approval-type workflows where certain steps are bypassed based on the data.
Types of Workflows
Workflows can be divided into two categories: Sequential and Parallel.
Sequential Workflow
Personnel perform sequential workflows in the manner they appear since each step depends on the preceding one. For instance, before work begins, a marketing idea might require clearance from the legal team, finance, and management. If there is an issue with a task, personnel must start from the beginning because sequential workflow always tends to move forward constantly.
Parallel Workflow
Personnel can perform parallel workflow tasks simultaneously as they are independent of one another. For instance, when asking for funding permission, personnel ask the legal team for documentation and signatures parallelly. Because parallel workflows don’t go in a streamlined manner, employees can address a problem with a task without affecting other steps in the workflow.
What is Workflow Management?
Workflow management entails planning, organizing, monitoring, and optimizing your team’s duties to ensure that they are completed as quickly and efficiently as feasible. Workflow management means scheduling and assigning the following details:
- What should be done?
- When it must be completed?
- How did the task need to be done?
- Who needs to perform it?
Now, just think of a scenario of managing a project with many details and you don’t have a plan to execute the tasks. Maybe you can accomplish the work, but it would be challenging.
Workflow Management Vs. Process Management
If you only need to automate a single process within your department, workflow software can be a helpful solution. For example, if you want to create a streamlined process for new customers joining your product, a good workflow platform can help you do this.
If you are leading a department with multiple processes that are interconnected, then you will want to look for a process flow management software tool. This will let you manage multiple workflows, forms, notifications, reports, and more.
Here, we take an airplane landing scenario to clarify the distinction between process and workflow management.
When a plane touches down, the captain, co-pilot, flight attendants, tower, and ground staff must follow a certain workflow. To ensure a successful landing, certain events must take place in a specific order. This is a fantastic illustration of a structured workflow.
Anyway, at an airport, this workflow occurs hundreds of times every day, and there are several other workflows such as take-off, refueling, and maintenance. Additionally, the tower also needs to gather information on all landings, including their duration, how they differ from prior days, any room for development, and many other factors.
If workflow management represents how a single plane lands, then workflow process management handles all other operations of an airport.
Why should you opt for Workflow Management?
Having a structured system of working is always preferable. It provides a roadmap for your employees to follow. You can focus them and their efforts in the right direction. The following are some incredible advantages of workflow management:
Minimize the Communication Gap
To prevent gaps and productivity leaks, businesses must have excellent employee communication. This does not happen frequently since employees may face communication gaps. You’ll find your business has greater communication once workflow management is put in place.
Enhanced customer satisfaction
In business schools, they constantly emphasize that customers are the world’s least patient people. You need to assume this for every consumer and treat them with priority. You can deliver outcomes to your customers more quickly and with higher quality when workflow management is in place.
Distribution of responsibility and authority
When all the stakeholders are not included in the development of a process, their authorities and responsibilities are frequently muddled. Workflow management helps in providing you with the data of exactly who is responsible for what tasks and who assigned them. With clear and transparent responsibilities and authorities, there will be a low chance of any dispute in the organization.
Avoids Micromanagement
Generally, most businesses deny the fact that they are micromanaging. But in most cases, the department heads in the organization might micromanage the employee under them. Workflow management minimizes the chances of micromanagement as activities are predefined.
What is a workflow management system?
Workflow management systems or workflow systems are software platforms that create, handle, monitor, and manage workflows. In other words, A workflow management system is software that simplifies workflow designing and execution processes.
Simply, a workflow management system,
permits individuals to automate repetitive tasks
automatically follow up on incomplete tasks in the process.
gives performance measurements and a broad overview of the process
Features of a workflow management system
A workflow management system supports workflow management by automating activities in a workflow for an efficient structured series of operations. An automated workflow management system must have the following features:
No-code workflow environment
Most people don’t like to use programming-based software. A GUI (graphical user interface) is the baseline requirement for any workflow management tool. This makes it easy for everyone in your workforce to use it, complete approvals, and even create new workflows without needing the help of the development team.
The more complicated tasks can often be pushed to the background and you only need a simple environment to do your work. This might include things like invoices, documents, PDFs, and files. All you need is a platform that doesn’t require any coding skills.
See. Click. Complete.
When designing a large program, it is important to keep the design consistent so that everyone using it can understand it. This means that all the buttons and icons should be easy to understand and use.
The WYSWYG (What You See Is What You Get) formula means that everything you see in a document or on a web page is what you will get. This is a simplified way of doing things and is usually easier for average people to use without needing help from a technically skilled individual.
Support for third-party apps
Some people prefer third-party apps on their devices to get news, play games, and more. These apps can be great because they allow you to do things that you can’t do with the official apps on your device.
If the software that you choose can support all of them, it would be a way to keep everyone engaged the same way. Everything would work together just like magic.
Storing files on the cloud
Saving files online means that everyone can access the documents at any time, no matter where they are. This is important because it means that important, confidential information is not kept on just one computer. Besides, processes like approving invoices require the support of multiple people, and each one needs to be able to see and approve the documents before they can go into effect.
The cloud-based file access lets you see and use all the files that have been uploaded to the workflow system. This makes it easy for decision-makers and top management to see what is going on and make suggestions. It also makes it easy to audit the process.
Glance feature
The important thing is to be able to keep track of the entire business process from a bird’s-eye view. Automating a process is just the first step because you’re bound to find flaws in a process as you go along. You need to address these flaws as soon as you realize them so you can get a better understanding of the business.
If a process has few steps and a high chance of errors, it will take longer to complete. But, if a process is being looped for no reason, there are many stages after it is established. This will help you understand how long it took, how to optimize it, and make sure employees receive the technical support they need.
Opportune notifications
Notifications are a way to keep employees up-to-date on what’s going on at work and in the world and to let them know about emergencies. For finance teams, this means being able to send salaries on time without having to contact a manager.
The notifications feature lets different departments communicate with each other. This helps keep everyone on their toes and ensures that work is done on time, as required. This also helps to maintain the quality and efficiency of the company as a whole.
Parallel workflows
When working on a project, it’s important to allow team members to work independently so they can get things done as quickly as possible. Parallel workflow means doing things at the same time, without waiting for someone else. If this approach is used in the software program, it will avoid errors.
Role-based access
Role-based access means that only the people who have the right to see the file can see it. This way, if there is an error, we can find out who was responsible and keep the privacy of the document and the tasks being done in the organization intact.
Affordability and scalability
The software you choose should be affordable for an organization of any size, and it should be able to scale when there is an increase or decrease in the number of users.
What is workflow management software?
Workflow management software is a software application designed to help manage tasks and sequences. It can be used to collaborate and automate processes and define different workflows for different types of projects. Additionally, workflow management software can help reduce the amount of manual effort required and help automate redundant tasks.
DTskill explains workflow management software
Workflow management software uses a workflow engine to help create and modify tasks, as well as schedule activities involved in different processes.
Workflow management software helps to organize business processes and make them more efficient, by providing a centralized and planned approach. It can also help to increase the number of tasks that can be completed in parallel, compared to a traditional process.
Workflow management software helps to reduce the time needed for transferring work between tasks and helps to keep track of progress and notifications. It can also reduce the costs associated with documentation involving paper and manual interventions.
The software is easy to use and allows businesses to continue running their operations without making major changes to their applications. It can help to simplify business processes, making it easier to monitor and control them.
This software helps businesses improve customer service by making it easier to do tasks consistently, which allows for better predictability in customer response levels. It also allows businesses to flexibly meet their needs, as well as support runtime functions, built time functions, and runtime interaction functions.
What is a workflow system?
A workflow system is a platform that combines several discrete workflow tools into one cohesive application that allows you to automate processes involving both machine and human tasks using a linear sequence or a dynamic set of tasks that can be run in parallel, depending on what needs the process has. Workflows can also connect to other systems using APIs, allowing you to exchange data between applications easily.
What workflow systems must be included?
Process Builder
A process builder is used to create an automated process flow. A business process runs in a pre-defined task sequence that is decided by predefined business terms and conditions. A process builder demonstrates these terms and conditions and determines whether a task is repetitive, automated, human-centric, or comes from another system.
Form designer
A form designer allows users to create complex forms that are used to gather input from other people. This information can then be used to help guide the process. For example, if an end-user selects “HR” as their department in a form, the information may be sent to someone in HR. Most modern form design tools include the ability to hide or show elements based on user input, as well as perform calculations live within the form.
Workflow engine
Workflow engines are applications that work with workflow systems, which are software programs that help organizations manage their tasks and processes by automating decision-making. These engines help automate the process of moving from one task or action to another, or of saving a document to a specific location in a document management system.
Reporting tools
All data and performance statistics about a process are stored in a workflow system. This allows for comparisons of data over time or against service level agreements, providing a complete picture of process performance. Reports and information can be displayed in real-time or scheduled for distribution, depending on user needs. Visual reports and dashboards can help comprehensively visualize the process, keeping your business running smoothly.
Self-service portal
A self-service portal is a web portal that employees can use to make requests, manage requests, and track request status. Administrators on the back end can create workflows and rules to automatically route requests based on a variety of factors, fulfill employee requests, and analyze performance.
Benefits of the workflow system
1. Enhance compliance with audit trails.
2. Boost production and productivity.
3. Reduce manual entry and request processing to streamline and accelerate internal procedures.
4. Reduce rework and mistakes.
5. Lessen the possibility of petitions being approved inappropriately.
6. Consistent, tailored request process for staff.
7. Reduce paperwork, costs, and waste drastically.
8. Business rules lessen the need for manual decision-making and exception management.
9. Real-time tracking of request status (finished, pending, in progress, etc.)
10. Better match the right skill sets to the right jobs.
11. Recognize individual and group performance trends over time.
12. Reduced license costs for business systems (ERP, CRM, etc.)
13. Track the progress of the team regarding the SLAs.
14. Find and eliminate any process barriers or bottlenecks.
What is the right time to invest in workflow automation?
Although each organization is different, several telltale indicators indicate that your organization would benefit from a workflow management solution. A few of these indicators include:
- Persistent problems with financial flow
- Employees frequently express that they are exhausted or overworked.
- Customers frequently voice their complaints.
- Recurring problems with scheduling and payroll.
- A lot of projects often go unfinished.
- Spreadsheets and manual processes are used a lot by your team.
- Manual processing is used for data entry and routine chores.
- The communication gap between the employees.
- The expectations of the workforce are unclear.
Beyond these considerations, when your work gets frustrating, you’ll know it’s time to invest in workflow management.
Start developing intelligent workflows with DTskill
DTskill helps you create smart workflows that make your business processes more efficient. It lets you connect with your customers, vendors, and partners on the same platform, so you can easily track the progress of a process from start to terminus.
DTskill makes it easy to automate tasks and speed up your workflows. You can simply choose an event and let technology take care of the heavy lifting for you.
