Workflow Automation

Any business heavily relies on the promised outcomes to their clients to achieve success and growth. The internal processes to complete a project are the most important parameters to increase overall productivity and deliver consistent results.

What is Workflow Automation?

From the business perspective, workflow automation is a way to reduce time and costs in any process with the paperwork involved. Since time and money investments are the key success metrics of any business process or project, here below we’ll try to walk you through the main steps of workflow automation, show workflow examples, and their benefits.  

For starters, let’s define what workflow itself means. For a process owner, workflow is an automated and transparent set of tasks that your team performs on a regular basis, under real-time supervision and expected result. Workflow participants see it as a repeatable clear process that ensures they are always up to date and spend less time on paperwork and communication. 

Automated business workflows should be able to assist any business methodically. Every upcoming and established business is leaning more and more towards workflow management software, according to Global Enterprise Workflow Automation Software Market 2020 Competitive Analysis.

Automated Workflows to Optimize Your Business Operations

– Reduce manual work
– Eliminate micromanagement
– Improve transparency and communication

See how it works in Fluix

Top Benefits of Workflow Automation 

Workflow automation software offers a myriad of benefits and improvements in the areas of productivity, liability, accuracy, efficiency, outcome satisfaction, minimizing time and errors, and mobility. Let’s focus on the main ones.

Less errors

It evidently cuts down the chances of human errors that come with any business activity by default. The data is filled in only once that contributes to lowering transcription errors. Even if errors are there, it can be erased quickly with just one alteration. It also significantly keeps every member of the team responsible for their individual roles. This means eliminating the chances of skipping a particular task.

Saved time 

With the help of workflow automation, every employee is responsible for their own time and completion of the role assigned to them. It offers transparency and the supervisors also cut down on the time spent on micromanaging. Monitoring the progress gets exceptionally easier and visible to everyone working on a particular project. The tracking capabilities allow faster and effective transitions between the stages of a project. 

Reduced costs

Workflow management software greatly reduces carbon footprints as the amount of paper used for printing and documentation drastically goes down. This is followed by the reduction in environmental footprint, and hence, reduced unloading in nature. Less paper consumption also means a decrease in overall cost associated with a particular project. 

Accountability and Transparency

The tracking capabilities of most workflow automation systems allow for the assigning of tasks and the monitoring of progress for a wide range of projects.

When integrated into a robust project management software system, these functions give businesses added information on specific changes being made to task documents and provide at-a-glance oversight for managers and supervisors.

The increased accountability made possible by automating and tracking workflows helps you monitor progress and identify stand-out performers on your team and expose concealed bottlenecks.

Enhanced productivity and easier collaboration

As workflow management software provides professionally formatted templates and other technical documents, the need to face monotonous and long-winded steps are dealt faster and with more efficacy.  Customizable forms can be used to start and cap off all the different types of business activities with adequacy. Communication tools for the team to collaborate improve results and fellowship. 

Upgraded strategic planning

Workflow Automation tools allow to accumulate data on the projects and people that are responsible for the task to enhance profitability. This helps in easing the decision making process when it comes to onboarding new clients, initializing new projects, and taking on new business activities. It provides in-depth practical information and tells you where your business is lacking and when it’s outpouring excellence. 

Well-organized communication

Smoothing internal communication is crucial for external positive outcomes. Not knowing what, how and when your team members are performing the delegated tasks can push the entire project in reverse. This, in turn, also helps reduce the rate of employee turnover when they are presented with a responsive automated process to sort out the communication with the management effectively. 

Easy-to-operate search process

The time taken manually by team members to collect details on a particular thing at every step increases the entire time frame of that project extremely. Automated business workflows have the ability to search based on a wide range of criteria so you and your team can act on the following step faster. Whether it’s billing and payment information, time taken by a particular employee, types of duties performed, client details, or even supply chain management data– everything is accessible and available promptly. 

These are only a few main ones of the many benefits that a workflow automation software provides. Don’t forget about the speedy approval cycles, strengthened prospect communication, and  enriched customer satisfaction that a business workflow automation brings along with it. 

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Steps for implementing workflow automation

Modeling your process is super easy with our workflow automation software. Before moving forward with a workflow, there are some crucial steps that one needs to complete in order to effectively transition to a workflow engine.

1. Clearly state why you want to automate your workflow and what areas within a process need improvement. You can create a visual representation of it, either with the help of pen and paper, or simply using the Microsoft office or G-suite. A flowchart can be designed pointing out the exact necessary steps or gaps to fill with the help of business workflow automation. 

2. After you have identified the problems, it is time to define your business goals. When business goals are coupled with smart and systematic workflow automation, then the achievement of the objectives gets super easier and the measurement of the progress with the outcomes becomes uncomplicated. 

3. Choose the workflow automation process that everyone on your team can follow through without any complications. After this stage, you should start a pilot with your team. 

Focus on keeping it as minimal as possible until your employees are familiar with everything. You can take it up a notch in the later stages so that your team members get the necessary transition period.  Assessing and monitoring the automated business workflows is obligatory to further improve your system. 

Workflow Examples 

Workflow management software offers a variety of workflows that can be used for Audit inspections, Maintenance inspections, Sales Contracts & Customers Approvals, CapEx/OpEx approvals, Supply Chain Management and more. Read on to know more.

Fluix makes the submission and collection of data on mobile effortless. Now your team can capture and send in the data directly from the job site without worrying about taking disordered heaps of papers and files. 

Fluix makes the approval workflow process an unchallenging task. Now you can perfectly streamline and document approval workflow with much better collaboration to meet deadlines, and act timely with our approval process workflow. 

Fluix makes the collection and dispatching of bulk e-signatures anytime, anywhere a secured process. Now you can make the mandatory changes to the documents and sign remotely to save time and money on scanning and printing. 

Fluix makes the evaluation and presentation of the documents in real-time an undaunting procedure. Now instantly dispatch the latest version of the documents and replace heavy binders of papers to share annotations and edits. 

A workflow automation software should be advanced enough to customize itself according to the project. It should offer the capability to automate business workflows that are customizable for both large scale and small scale operations. 

“The real key Fluix selling point for Siemens Gamesa is the customizable workflows. Without this functionality, we would not be able to make the solution work across varied working locations.”

Kathryn Ridsdale, Mobile Engineer, Siemens Gamesa

Summary

In the long-term, workflow automation reduces risk and errors, saves time, increases productivity, and is easy to improve. Every business strives for these results, and workflow automation provides them. A successful company needs to focus on the short-term but plan for the long-term. And the value a company gains with workflow automation is immediate and only improves over time.