So you want to learn about workflows? Before diving in, why don’t you ask yourself a few questions first? In “Understanding The Workflow Part I,” we’ll explore the foundational concepts and help you assess your current knowledge and needs.
Why someone or some business needs a workflow to be implemented in their process? Understanding The Workflow Part I..
What are the uses and advantage/features of using workflow in your business?
What issues business will face if it is not implementing the workflow process in there business?
Can we implement the workflow in each business process?
Bla Bla Bla
So many question right Eh?
To Answer all these Questions we are writing this post for you and in the next upcoming 2-3 articles from our Workflow series, we will try to answer all these questions because we don’t want you guys to just start building the workflow and learn technical things without understanding the answer for all these business related questions first that will always come in a picture once you start working or Developing SAP Workflows.
What are we going to learn in this article?
- Workflow: Basic Concept and Real Time Examples of general workflow, not just SAP workflow.
Work Flow: Basic Concept and Real Time Examples
People who have no idea about workflows get scared when someone says that workflow is automation and Workflow automation is going to kick them out from their Jobs because everything is going to be automated.
This is completely wrong.
First of all, we should understand that workflow is not fully automation.
Note: Please note that we have used the Equivalent symbol (≈ ) Instead of using the Equal To Symbol(=) in the above image.
Why ?
Because Workflow is automating the business process, not all the tasks that are involved in this business process. Because at the end all the task will be completed by a person/user only.The effort of retrieving the task is avoided because the system(Workflow) delivers it to the user.
Workflow = Automation of ‘Flow of Work’
In simple words ” Automation of ‘Flow of Work‘ ” is called Workflow. The Flow of work is controlled and coordinated by the workflow management system.
Confused ?
Do not worry! To clear all your doubts why don’t we take a real-time example of a business scenario and see what we are trying to tell here. Why are we repeating that workflow is the automation of process flow but not fully automation?
Real-Time scenario
We have created this animation just for you so that you can understand our Real Time Scenario Example Clearly
Now we are going to compare one business scenarios without workflow and with workflow and we will let you decide which one is best for the business.
Business process, Without the involvement of Workflow :
Look at the above image and imagine Green shirt guy Rob needs to create a purchase order because he needs to buy something. After Creating the PO in the system, Rob is a little bit confused.
But Why is Rob confused ?
Rob is Confused because after creating the PO,
- Rob don’t know who is the correct approver of this PO, First, he needs to find out who is the correct approver for his Purchase order and to find out that it will take a lot of effort may be.
- Ok, Let’s just think that Rob knows who is approves(Mr. Manager) the PO but how come the approver will know that Rob has created a PO that needs to be approved by him ?
- Rob needs to call or send an email to the Right approver to review his PO – What If the approver is on leave?Then Who is going to take care of this approval.
- What if after calling and sending email to approver, Approver has forgotten to approve the PO? , So, Rob needs to call the approver again and again and he needs to send reminder emails regularly until the PO gets approved.
- After doing so much of manual effort from Rob side, Suppose PO got approved by the approver but how do Rob come to know that his PO request got approved/rejected unless and until PO approver is going to call him or sending him an email.
- Etc.
So, Rob needs to tackle all these issues for a single Purchase order approval
Don’t be unfair now let’s just look into those issues that approver is going to face
- Why Approver will realize that some Buy endorsement request is coming to get inspected by him except if and until he gets a call/email from the purchaser.
- He wants the specific information i.e He really wants the specific Buy request number and the exchanges that he will expect to survey the PO.
- He doesn’t know what work he wants to finish,.There will be 100’s of PO that approver needs to endorse yet which one is critical, which one is of high need.
- What is the cutoff time for endorsing those Po’s?
- In the event that he neglected to endorse the PO he won’t get any update except if and until the purchaser of the PO calls him or send him an update email.
- imagine a scenario where he is on leave, Then who will deal with his obligation.
- And so on.
Presently believe in the event that a solitary Buy request endorsement process has caused this quite a bit of manual exertion, disarrays, email correspondence then imagine a scenario where there are 1000 PO’s comes in the image for a company.everyday
Our business needs an administration situation that can give “Right Information To Perfect Individual at Ideal Opportunity” and my dear companions that administration framework is called work process the executives framework
Workflow Management Process = “Delivering Right Data To Right Person at Right Time“
Same Business process With the involvement of workflow :
Assuming you are contrasting both the pictures, You ought to have the option to comprehend how the entire business process situation got computerized when we have involved the work process situation.
When the Buy request gets made in the framework, Work process gets set off that has in this way resolved the right approver for the Buy request in view of certain guidelines and has conveyed the archives, information and errand are passed to the approver(Next Participant).Workflow guarantees that the right work is shipped off the ideal individual brilliantly in the right succession with the right information.The exertion of recovering the undertaking is stayed away from on the grounds that the framework conveys it.All the data, clarification and directions accessible are conveyed to the client simultaneously.
Presently I believe that you have your responses to your inquiries and presently you have perceived the reason why work process isn’t completely automation,Why we have involved the Same image in our picture :D,Workflow is robotizing the cycle yet toward the end, an individual necessities to play out the exercises physically.
You should able to understand that, Goals of reorganizing the business process via workflow is to –
- Make Cycle stream clear to those included.
- Increment worker obligation.
- improve the nature of the interaction.
- Increment advantages to clients.
- Add values to deals.
Other important question. Can we implement the workflow to all the business process?
Answer – No.
A workflow management system facilitates the electronic processing of structured process that :
- Incorporates various exercises.
- Continuously happens in comparative or indistinguishable structure.
- Affected a few group or division.
- Furthermore, Require a serious level of coordination.
- Work process The executives framework controls process as indicated by a predefined model.
Note: On the off chance that you can not execute a capability physically, You can’t execute it with a work process either.The capability should exist in the program code before it tends to be utilized by the work process.
We need to take a break on Understanding The Workflow Part since we don’t want you to get overwhelmed. In the next article of our workflow series, we will focus on “The 5 Primary Features of Business – The 5 Ws of the workflow.”
See you before long folks in an another Understanding The Workflow Part I.
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