The term “Workflow” is getting bigger day after day when organizations realize the benefits of automating their work activities either in governmental or private sectors. Replacing the typical manual workflow procedures may have its obstacles and challenges of changing to automated systems but it absolutely will end up (if implemented correctly) with the bottom line objective: increasing work efficiency.

It is important to highlight that the “Workflow” term is such a big umbrella that covers basic and simple serial automation of work steps and extends to cover large enterprise implementations with the advanced integration with external systems, processing of data in forms, document generation, monitoring dashboards, and complex analytical reporting. It is important to know that this wide range of Workflow features with the different requirements and needs implies a great variance in overall project cost. This fact underlines the importance of conducting proper requirements definition and analysis before choosing the best solution with the best fit to the organization's needs.

For the sake of simplicity; we can divide the Workflow into 3 main categories:

1-    Ad-hoc Workflow Solutions:  This type of solutions provides the ability of automating the activities in an unplanned way where the solution will not provide a pre-defined structure to the work steps. Imagine workflow activities like handling an incoming complaint where the involved participants and the number of work steps will be totally decided upon by the knowledge workers who get involved in the workflow cycle.

 
2-    Structured Workflow Solutions: This type provides the ability to define the flow of activities as well as the participants in a structured manner based on the type of business process. Such solutions will fit when the activities can be pre-defined and have a known structure like in applying for a New License for example. This type of Workflow Solutions is also known as Business Process Management.

3-    Case Management Workflow Solution: This type may be seen as an intermediary solution between Ad-hoc and structured workflows. In this type, work steps get routed to process participants on ad-hoc basis, however a participant will trigger built-in pre-configured sub-processes as needed where each sub-process had been designed to perform a specific function. An example is a Legal Case which requires legal advice, payment of fees, interviews etc. on need basis.  

In any type; the owner of the activity at any certain point of time should be only one person to hold the responsibility to take the necessary action. Moreover; in all types of workflow the solution must provide the ability to monitor and track Workflow processes in order to find and eliminate delays or bottlenecks and eventually improve the work efficiency.

Finally; the “Workflow” term will definitely have its big amount of details which should indicate a proper selection of the solution vendor, because in such “Big Umbrellas”; the vendor’s experience and professional services are not less important than the product itself.

Osama Mjalli
Pre-Sales Consultant
ITEC - Jordan