Indice contenuti
Each of us in our work activities follow workflows, which involve people from the team, the company or even external people. In highly regulated sectors, workflows are even regulated by stringent procedures, which lead to long approval steps, paper documents, signatures and folders that fill up the archives. A Workflow Management System is an important help to us
What is a Workflow Management System?
It is a technology capable of digitising work processes, sharing information, managing communication and the passage of tasks from one employee to another according to a set of procedural rules.
In a workflow management system, we provide an initial input to the process and through the activities of the team involved, we produce a final output.
Let us take a specific example.
We have to launch a new pharmaceutical product on the market and we need to create a product sheet of the same, where the product code, information on ingredients, packaging, line, laboratory analysis, and so on will be entered. This process involves several departments in the company: engineering, artwork control, quality, laboratory, which will each fill in their own section and approve and send the process on to the next department.
Paper Processes vs Digital Processes
Imagine the process described above on paper. Departments located in the company that must fill in the form and take care of delivering it to the other departments or scan it and send it via email. Especially at this time when many people are working remotely.
If we notice an error, we have to contact the various departments again to find out where the paper form is and retrieve it, and then start again with the approvals due to the change.
The situation improves with a digital file (e.g. an editable pdf), but we consider data security, the availability of the document allocated in the company intranet or the impossibility of compiling it simultaneously or storing it securely.
A workflow management system makes all of this orderly, secure and accessible everywhere. Each department has its own section, every change is tracked and access to the system is possible anywhere with total data security.
READ ALSO: Technologies to support business processes
Why digitise processes with a Workflow Management System?
A workflow management system adapts flexibly to every corporate and business process, regardless of the sector to which it belongs. It also adapts to changes and evolutions of the organisation over time.
Implementing it in your company is beneficial because:
- It automates repetitive tasks. This allows the company’s resources to be dedicated to more challenging activities that increase their skills;
- It increases responsibility. In workflow management, the objective is well defined and each resource has a role and tasks assigned with extreme transparency. In addition, the system tracks in real time the status of activities, changes, any delays and KPIs can be extracted;
- Supports optimisation of processes. Think of those activities that can, for example, be carried out simultaneously;
- Improve communication and collaboration in the organisation. Information on processes, activities, status is always available and viewable by the authorised team;
- It reduces process management times. Thanks to deadlines and system notifications, the team is always alerted about tasks to be done and also if there are changes to the tasks;
- It reduces paper waste in view of sustainability;
- It highlights activities that add value to business processes;
- It enables access to relevant data anywhere in real time;
- It improves the transparency of information;
- It reduces human error
- It facilitates decision-making and strategic planning