What is workflow automation?
Workflow automation designs and executes a series of repetitive business tasks based on business rules to reduce human interactions and increase productivity. Workflow is a series of tasks that has to be accomplished to achieve a business objective. Most businesses’ daily operations depend on repetitive tasks such as sending email verification, completing forms, and so on. When doing something repetitive, human errors may occur, for instance, the employee might email the wrong recipient with a similar name or forget to include the completed document. Human error is an inevitable problem for most business processes so companies use workflow management software and automation software to simplify the human interaction of a process. Workflow automation is performed using robotic process automation (RPA) software and is also referred to as RPA.
Workflow automation turns complicated manual processes into simple tasks. Managers can design a specific workflow and assign them to the team according to availability. The individual team member will receive the assigned tasks to complete without having to interact with the manager. Once the team member marks the task completed, the manager or the next responsible person can review and approve or deny the completed work with a click of a button. Different next steps will show up according to the decisions. This eliminates the back and forth interaction between all the parties involved to streamline high-volume processes.
Types of workflow automation
Depending on the tasks, companies will choose different workflow management tools.
- Generic workflow automation: Most workflow management software allows managers to build a generic workflow that works for a wide range of tasks.
- Document or forms automation: This type of automation software digitizes data capture by automating the process of creating and managing digital content. It allows for the creation of a variety of forms such as checklists, contracts, surveys, work orders, internal company records, and client-facing documents.
- Workload automation: Automating IT-related tasks are referred to as workload automation. IT teams use this type of software to streamline common IT tasks and integrate with the service desk software or help desk software to manage incoming internal and external requests.
Benefits of using workflow automation
When used correctly, workflow automation can lead to many benefits. Some of these benefits include:
- Reduce human error: Every task is standardized, so without manual entry and manual process decisions, the room for error is less.
- Improve compliance: By limiting the scope and setting up boundaries for each task, the task can only be approved when it is compliant with company standards and policy. Historical workflows are recorded for auditing.
- Eliminate unnecessary management: The bigger the project, the more administrative work is required to ensure team communication, task transferring, and evaluation. Workflow automation can do all of these tasks which replace administrators to save overheads.
- Improve transparency: Managers can see a 360-degree view of tasks completed in different pipelines for each team member. This helps greatly reduce biases when evaluating employee performance and productivity.
- Reduce paperwork and email: By approving and handling tasks on the workflow management software, teams no longer have to go through work by paper or email.
- Improve productivity: Handling repetitive tasks is boring and time consuming. Instead of spending hours going back and forth on the administrative details, employees can just do the requested work and click submit when completed. This saves time and boosts employee morale.
Basic elements of workflow automation
The format for workflow automation in workflow management can vary, but complete workflow automation will include the following elements:
- Workflow design: Managers can create a workflow from scratch or by using templates. This involves a series of decision trees with if/then logic.
- Workflow execution: Once the designed task starts, tasks will be assigned to corresponding team members to specify what work needs to be done based on skill sets, priority, and availability.
- Workflow evaluation: Workflow can be optimized by reviewing completion hours, work quality, and so on.
Workflow automation best practices
In order to make workflow automation work, companies should follow these best practices:
- Align with company policy: When designing a workflow, the designer needs to consider the project goals and compliance.
- Involve with stakeholders: One simply doesn’t create work and assign it to others without consulting with them. In order to get buy-in from managers, team members, and executives, the workflow designer should go over the expectations, costs, and outcomes with them early on. This avoids unintended consequences and helps with change management.
- Setting key performance indicators (KPIs) for each task: Now that every task can be tracked, managers can set up KPIs to evaluate the quality of work for each step of the process. Often managers only have KPI for the entire project instead of analyzing individual tasks.
- Offboard administrator: Once all the tasks are automated, managers may not need administrators to keep track of all the tasks. They should consider gradually offboarding them to save money.
Workflow automation vs. business process management (BPM)
Workflow automation is part of business process management (BPM) software. BPM is the practice of streamlining and improving business activities to more efficiently perform specific business actions. These business actions require cross-team collaboration and consist of many moving parts, whether they are software systems or human intervention.
Workflow automation usually refers to a sequence of tasks that involve one or more team members. Conversely, BPM refers to a central business planning and execution that manages all departments on the company scale. It can also be said that workflow automation or management is a lightweight version of BPM.
Workflow automation discussions on G2
by Keerthi Rangan
by Preethica Furtado
by Washija Kazim