Workflow Management: Organize Effectively

In today’s business world, they are part of everyday work: workflows. In every company, workflows are more or less pronounced, depending on the size of the company. To ensure that the company’s workflows are not unstructured and end in chaos, companies make use of what is known as workflow management. Workflow management is also referred to as business process management. In this article, we show why your company should also use workflow management.

What is a workflow?

A definition of the term workflow precedes a discussion of the meaning of workflow management. The terms business process and workflow are often used in the same context. However, both differ from each other. The workflow goes one step further than the business process, as a workflow is the automated sequence of a business process.

What is a business process?

The business process has two levels:

1) Level of processes.

The process itself is the generic term and in itself includes several sub-processes. Each process has a starting point and an endpoint. At the end of the process, there is a particular result.

2) Activity level

For a process to function in itself, it requires various actions or activities. Only in this way can the business process be successfully executed and completed.

For example, a business process consists of order entry, production, delivery, and billing. This process is in turn subdivided into sub-processes such as preparation, production, and control. Resources to handle this business process include, for example, activities, personnel, machines, IT, raw materials, etc. At the end of the business process, output comes out.

Definition Workflow

Workflow refers to all operations within a process that must be carried out for the process itself to be completed. In addition, the workflow determines which person has to file an item at which location so that all persons involved in the process have the information they need at any time. All steps and their sequence within the workflow must be defined beforehand. The workflow also takes care that dependencies within the process are defined. This makes it possible to identify and eliminate bottlenecks and errors. The workflow also determines which technical tools are used so that the business process can be carried out successfully.

What are the steps to create a workflow?

The following steps are necessary so that a workflow can be created:

The first step is to get an overview of all the processes taking place in the company. If an overview of the processes within the company is not yet available, one must first be sketched and created.
The next step deals with modeling the business processes. In doing so, it must be determined which person does what at which point in time in the process.
The following examples show business processes for which modeling is necessary:
A customer account is opened.
A vacant position within the company must be filled.
An invoice has to be created and released.
An employee’s vacation request must be processed.
After the previous step, the next step is to model the workflow. Here, it is determined which technical tools are necessary to execute and realize the business process. Here, the process is broken down into smaller processes until it is possible to automate these processes.
The last step contains the final result: the finished workflow. This must now be checked at regular intervals and adapted if necessary.

How can a workflow be represented visually?

Since it is much easier to imagine an abstract system, in this case, a business process, in concrete terms, it is necessary to visualize it with the help of various tools. There are different software for visualizing business processes. These include event-driven process chains (EPC), Unified Modeling Language (UML) programs, and flowcharts.

What does Workflow Management mean?

The workflow or process is controlled from two sides. On the one hand, by the workflow management and on the other hand by the process management. Process management is responsible for the technical or conceptual level. Process Management analyzes the various workflows and ensures that they are constantly improved.

Workflow Management takes care of the operational area. Process Management and Workflow Management go hand in hand. The results of Process Management serve as the basis for Workflow Management. Workflow Management is used to control the work processes. Workflow Management aims to ensure that the workflow functions optimally. All persons involved in the process and the available technical tools are taken into account in Workflow Management. The great challenge of workflow management is thus to optimally integrate all persons involved in the process, most of whom are spatially distant from each other, into the process. The actual procedure is constantly controlled and adapted by workflow management.

Among other things, process management is concerned with the optimization of processes. However, process management also plays an essential role in the organizational structure and process organization. This means that almost every area of a company is affected by process management.

In most cases, process management is used in organizations that work in a process-oriented manner. The processes are monitored, controlled, and supported by various action steps. Not only are goals related to the process included, but also influencing factors such as costs, quality, time, and customer satisfaction.

However, there are also processes to which process management cannot be applied. These include processes that only take place once, such as projects.
Process management uses a variety of methods. We have already explained some of these methods in other of our articles. Among these methods are:
- KAIZEN
- Lean Management
- Process Control
- Change Management
- Six Sigma
- Process Modeling
- Process optimization
For processes to ultimately deliver the desired result, constant monitoring of the processes is the fundamental prerequisite. Only this way is a smooth process possible, taking into account various key figures and the methods just presented.
The main objectives of workflow management are as follows:
- The business process is to be qualitatively improved.
- Business processes are to be designed uniformly. The times required to process a workflow are to be shortened.
- This results in lower costs.
- The availability or provision of information is to be improved.
- If the transfer of information requires a change of medium in order to process the data further, this is referred to as a media break. Media discontinuities are to be minimized or completely avoided with workflow management.
- Business processes are to be made more flexible.
- Business processes are to be made more transparent.
Workflow management offers several advantages to ensure that workflows are controlled correctly:

Higher quality of workflows: predefined rules make it much easier to detect deviations promptly. These deviations are easier to track and can be corrected more quickly.

More efficient work: Tasks that repeatedly occur at regular intervals are accelerated using various techniques. This shortens waiting times within workflows.

Better teamwork: By dividing the individual process steps into many small sub-processes, the entire process runs like a Swiss watch. This ensures better cooperation between all the people involved in the process, which leads to better communication.

What is a Workflow Management System?

A Workflow Management System (WfMS) is a program that supports workflow management and helps to model workflows. The Workflow Management System software consists of different modules or components. Its core component is the modeling of the business processes with the linked organizations. Furthermore, another module is the workflow engine. With it, the expirations of the processes can be steered. The workflow engine also monitors the individual processes. When the processes are finished, the engine starts the next process. The WfMS also monitors the respective processes. This allows the separate processes to be analyzed. The results of the analyses are then incorporated into the overall business process modeling.
Workflow management systems are designed to simplify complex workflows with their processes.

The workflow engine discussed earlier detects various events that happen during the workflow. For example, the system detects when a document that was sent by email arrives. Then, the WfMS reacts to this event and initiates further steps that are part of the modeled process flow of this process. For example, a follow-up action may be that the document that was sent by email is further processed in a document management system or, in the case of an escalating event, forwarded to management directly.

The task of a workflow management system is to recognize various events within the processes automatically. Subsequently, actions are to be executed on these events. In many cases, the enterprise uses specially programmed implementations for the events and activities that the WfMS is to perform.

Workflow management systems help the enterprise verify workflows. For example, they check whether or not an event should occur when a specific action is taken.

The modules of a WfMS are assigned to different areas:

Routing: this is the basis of the WfMS. With routing, the information that belongs to a workflow is forwarded to the next point in the workflow.

Distribution: If an exceptional situation arises within the workflow, the corresponding information is forwarded to the appropriate position to take action. If a position within a workflow is underutilized, the WfMS takes appropriate action and assigns a new task so that no unnecessary waiting time occurs between workflows.

Coordination: secondary processes of the workflow are coordinated. This prevents resources from being wasted unnecessarily.

Auxiliary function: Additional work is processed independently by the WfMS. This relieves the corresponding area of tasks for which no decisions have to be made.

Assistance: With the help of AI-driven methods, adjustments are made within the processes, and suggestions are made as to what the next steps should be.
- It structures transaction processing.
- The lead times required by a company to process an order are to be reduced.
- The processes should have a high level of transparency.
The use of a workflow management system is worthwhile for companies. After only a short time, the Workflow Management System is an indispensable helper. Three advantages are highlighted below, which show why a WfMS is worthwhile:

Lower costs: it is essential to reduce costs for a company to generate maximum profit permanently. WfMS enables better cooperation between the parties involved in the various processes since the tasks converge centrally in the WfMS. High personnel costs are eliminated because the success of a project does not have to be analyzed and evaluated.

Transparent business processes: Through a WfMS, the status of a process is clear to everyone involved in the business process quickly. If the WfMS is documented in detail, there is no need for time-consuming and costly searches for the source of errors in the event of escalation.

Easy to use: A straightforward user interface of the WfMS, which the user himself can flexibly adapt, allows the user to quickly create a business process to suit his own company needs. Automatic notification by e-mail or within the system in a new task ensures that employees are informed soon and can react.
What a business process looks like in concrete terms will be shown using the example of a document release.

Before a document can be finally released, it may have to pass through several departments. In the process, the document often has to pass through several checks. Using the example of an invoice, for which the accounting department in a company is responsible in most cases, the following process shows the processing sequence:
- The company receives an invoice. This can be in digital or paper form.
- Thanks to OCR programs that recognize text in a document, the content of the invoice is automatically captured.
- Once the invoice is captured, a document management system automatically stores it. The procedure takes into account both digital information and information in analog form.
- Once the invoice has been finally verified, it is automatically posted in the system.
The use of a workflow management system has the great advantage that most of this process is fully automated. The invoices are automatically entered and move through the individual approval departments. The people involved in this process have access to the same invoice at all times. Thanks to the WfMS, this eliminates the need for different variants of the document.

Workflow management in the factory: this is how it works

As industry and its manufacturing plants become increasingly digitalized, the question arises as to how manufacturing companies can benefit from efficient and automated workflows within their manufacturing processes.

With the help of FORCAM and Microsoft, a new era of smart manufacturing is taking off: With over 400 apps from the Microsoft ecosystem – from Microsoft Office to Trello to Salesforce – employees in manufacturing companies can now organize, automate and digitize all of their factory processes. Even more, with Microsoft Power Automate, manufacturing teams can configure automated and event-driven workflows through simple configuration, with no programming required. This is how workflow management works in the 21st century! Whether tool breakage or missing material – teams organize their work in such a way that they can identify and eliminate errors and downtimes in real time and workflows are triggered and executed in a partially or fully automated manner.