Most businesses and organisations will have established internal controls and rules in order to be efficient and effective, comply with applicable rules, laws and regulations, as well as make sure that they stay profitable; or at least don’t suffer from ill-advised decisions that can have a detrimental effect.
Decision making is a crucial part of good business and quite rightly requires final authorisation before anything can be implemented. Someone, whether it is the owner, head of department or pre-appointed employee, has to take responsibility for authorising a decision or agreeing to certain requests within business workflow software. Yet the process of a workflow approval for many still remains a manual process which is time-consuming and error prone.
Unfortunately, some authorisation and workflow approval processes can have a negative effect on the overall workflow of an organisation. If the issue isn’t addressed in a timely manner, it can affect employees or departments – planning could be put on hold, employees and departments may not be able to carry out their tasks – all of which can have a knock on effect, from production and sales to distribution and customer relationships.
Sometimes authorisations need more than one authoriser because the subject exceeds a line managers remit. Unfortunately, this can mean more manual communications being pushed around the organisation and longer authorisation cycles. Again, this becomes a hindrance to company productivity and performance. This is especially relevant when it comes to significant decisions such as large purchase order authorisations, new projects or an increase in production.
Automating Workflow Approval
Automating authorisation and approval workflow can significantly improve productivity, remove administration and enforce company procedures. It also ensures that key personnel have the most current information to analyse, which is essential for scenarios in which significant decisions need to be authorised.
Here are a few examples of authorisation processes that can be automated:
Finance
- Credit Approvals / New Account
- Expenses / Budget / POs
Human Resources
- Timesheets
- Holiday
Production
- New Projects / Designs
- Increase in Production
Marketing
- Material (brochures, PR, case studies)
- Outgoing Communications
A Workflow Automation Solution
Codeless Platforms’ BPA Platform provides organisations with a simple collection of drag and drop tools to monitor, create and report on workflow authorisation processes. Workflows can start or end inside or outside of any company system.
The BPA Platform can automatically identify if a workflow authorisation requires approval from multiple line managers and direct it to the next authoriser for review as and when a preceding authorisation has been given. A complete audit trail of decisions made can also be recorded.
A good example of this relates to the procurement process and purchase orders (PO). The platform quietly monitors the database and when a PO is entered into the system it will automatically identify if the request requires approval from multiple line managers. This approach can also be applied to monitoring and enforcing discount authorisation processes, holiday approval processes as well as appropriate credit limit approval processes.
The Benefits of Automating Workflow Processes
Adding automated workflow capabilities to your system will revolutionise your business and deliver a powerful and flexible workflow authorisation solution that ensures business rules are adhered to and time-consuming administration is removed.
