What is workflow?
The easiest way is to refer to Wikipedia:
„A workflow consists of an orchestrated and repeatable pattern of activity, enabled by the systematic organization of resources into processes that transform materials, provide services, or process information. It can be depicted as a sequence of operations, the work of a person or group, the work of an organization of staff, or one or more simple or complex mechanisms.”
WfMC (WorkFlow Management Coalition) coalition defined workflow as the automation of business processes, in whole or in part, during which documents, information or tasks are transferred from one participant to the next, according to appropriate management procedures.
Business process management system (BPMS)
Processes can take place in an analogue way, but when we talk about workflow today, software usually comes to mind, called: workflow management system (WfMS or WFMS) or business process management system (BPMS).
These are tools to configure, execute and monitor a defined sequence of processes and tasks. These systems can be process-oriented or data-oriented.
To illustrate the use of this type of tool, let’s imagine the flow of a vacation request.
An employee wants to take a few days of vacation leave and therefore fills out a vacation application form. This type of electronic form contains at least: the applicant’s first name, last name and position as well as the date range on which they want to be vacant.
What could the flow of this process look like? For example like this:
an electronic document flow system, subsequent actors of this process simply fill their forms (or return the process to one of the previous steps).
Many business processes are more complicated – below you will find an example of a professional scheme of an incoming correspondence process map:
Or, not less complex – an invoice processing map:
What processes are the most popular?
Companies and institutions usually implement:
- Invoices workflow
- Incoming correspondence
- Purchase requests
- Vacation requests
- Support
- Complaints service
- Contract approval
In Dew-X we have implemented many ready to use templates of processes that can be run as we have prepared them or you can modify them to adapt to the needs of your organizations.