A little while ago I read an amusing article on how an organisation bought a Workflow Management System to scale up their productivity. On reading further, I learnt the strategy used in procuring the workflow management system. In order to save time, they opted for a workflow tool with many good ratings from various businesses and settled for the premium package, to make the best of it. The impact the workflow tool had on the organisation, simply put, was significant. It put them to a standstill, nearly.
Their argument was pretty clear. Having bought the best workflow management system (WMS) available in the market, they expected it to suit their business hand in glove.
With many Workflow Management System software available on a simple Google Search, each offering various packages, businesses are easily misled into buying the wrong one. Whatever the State of your Workflow Management may be, using the right WMS tool is critical.To put an end to the misconceptions, here is a quick insight into the concept of Workflow Management System:
- A WMS is a software tool that allows individuals to collaborate and automate business processes.
- With a WMS, you can automate redundant tasks and ensure that uncompleted tasks are followed up.
- A WMS gives you the complete picture of the workflow along with performance metrics. So you’ll get to know what processes is in place, which one is slowing you down and which processes needs your attention.
Although many WMS’s claim to blend seamlessly with the organisation’s Sequence of Operations, growth in productivity is a question that goes unanswered. The following features will help you determine how much productive you can get with your WMS.
10. Cloud Based: You would be going backwards, if you are not choosing a Cloud based Workflow Management System. People no longer need to work from their desks, with cloud based WMS people can access workflows from their home or from anywhere on the go. Not just that, you are relieved from making huge investments both in hardware and software, let alone the nightware of making it work. Cloud Based WMS saves you truck loads of time and money. Switch to cloud !!!
9. Integrating Documents: Business Process workflows involve structured content as in forms, and unstructured content like documents. A WMS that elegantly weaves the documents and forms within the workflow eliminates the need to switch between applications and provides a seamless experience. For instance, with a Google Docs integrated business process workflow, you can view the documents within the context of your business operation.
8. Email Notifications: Emails are not going away and they are a tool to get attention. Email notifications for newly assigned tasks and SLA violations play a key role in the smooth running of a workflow. A business workflow management system (WMS) built around your business’s email provides a seamless correspondence within the workflow.
7. SLA Status Indicators: A visual representation on the WMS dashboard, depicting the status of every task in order to draw immediate attention to the critical ones. Colour codes are used most commonly – Red indicating: SLA breach, Yellow: task is almost going cold and Green for other tasks.
6. Pre-filled Forms: Organisations may have many recursive tasks like, employees submitting travel reports every week, requiring them to fill forms. Instead of filling out these forms every time, you would want to provide pre-filled forms, which they can submit quickly by making minor tweaks. Workflow is after all about time and improving productivity, is it not?
5. Reassigning Users: Nothing goes as planned. In the middle of the workflow you may want to change the person currently assigned to a task. Without the ability to re-assign, 5% of workflows will get stuck. A good WMS should allow administrators to reassign users to tasks with ease as and when needed.
4. Workflow Patterns: Workflows may involve sequential, parallel or even multi-tier processes or a mix of them. A really powerful workflow system (WMS) should not enforce constraints on the process flow, instead, it should provide the flexibility to create such processes.
3. Role Based Access Control: Without the ability to easily define “Who does What” a WMS can not function properly. Every WMS should have the capability of providing access based on user roles. Making changes dynamically should be with ease and should *not* break the historical workflow requests.
2. Reports: Partly, the purpose of automating workflow is to understand how things are performing. To assist this analysis we need reports indicating the ‘who,what and when’ of things. These reports help in decision making by enabling us to assimilate both the process and participant perspectives. A KPI dashboard will provide a clear picture detailing the performance of every process and participant.
1. Modelling forms & Graphical Representation: The most basic and must have feature. An average workflow management system should allow you to model a business forms to capture information and depict the flow of the processes through your organization in a visual style. Modelling forms should be simple and intuitive for anyone in the organisation to roll out a process in just a few hours. Most WMS fail as they lack the simplicity and WMS projects fail due to this very reason.
Choose your WMS wisely!
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