What is Workflow / WebFlow ?

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Category: Workflow

Published on Thursday, 30 October 2008 05:18

Written by Kevin Wilson

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Flow of Work with the Right Information to the Right Individual(s) at the Right Time

1) Assist with Decision Making
- Provide Access to Data, Transactions, Documents
- Consolidate information
2) Facilitate Actions
- Provide Suggestions on Possible Actions
- Enforce action

3) Go Paperless
4) Instill business rules
- Build rules into SAP
- Enforce processes
5) Enforce process consistency
- Move SAP from transactional to process engine
6) Improve data quality
- Validations, Mandatory data
7) Ensure timely action
- Escalation of items not performed at predefined service levels
8) Automate background steps
- Trigger other processes
- Send notifications
- Pass data into other systems
9) Provide Process Visibility (limited to workflow'd processes. SAP's Event Management module allows for more global access to your process status and exceptions)
- Within a workflow:
    - View end-to-end process
    - Allow users to view previous and next process-participants
    - Provide Immediate status visibility
- Historical data:
    - Utilize process metrics for continuous process improvement
10) Provide reporting on KPIs
- Process cycle times
- iterations of exception processes
11) Prioritization of tasks
- Important tasks are performed before less critical tasks
12) Work is easily delegated when the work participants change
- Through sickness, leave, firing, ...

Workflow combines IT with Business Process. Set it in place and let it work for you. Let your people monitor the processes and execute their work through their inboxes.

Example workflows:
Materials Management

• Purchase Req Approval
• Purchase Order Approval
• Goods Receipt Exception Handling
• Material Master Setup
• Vendor Master Setup
• Request For Quotation (RFQ)

Sales and Distribution

• Customer Master Setup
• Quotation Approval
• Pricing Approval
• Credit Memo Approval
• Blocked Order

Human Resources

• Recruitment
• Personnel Change Requests

Finance and Accounting

• Travel & Expense
• Invoice Processing / Approval
• Budget Approval
• Deduction Management
• Lockbox Processing

Other

• Quality Notifications
• Engineering Change Requests
• Return Material Authorization
• Maintenance and Service Orders
• Claims Processing

Hard ROI

• Headcount through more efficient processes
• Improved customer satisfaction

Soft ROI

• Time savings spread out amongst all participants
• Paper cost
• Regulatory conformity
• Reduced storage cost
• Reduced training effort
• Improved data accuracy
• Reduction in cycle time
• Management reporting
• Consistent processes

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