Best Workflow Management Software

Workflow Management Software: A Buyer's Guide

Most businesses these days need to be efficiently managed on an organizational level. Different process management software available in the market allows you to manage the complete workforce for your company. The latest is the Workflow Management system, similar to business management systems. These systems are custom-made and often easily customizable per market standards and organizational requirements.  Often, management systems sell in the market based on modules. Individual modules are saleable. One of the easiest and most upcoming yet better and efficient ways of working is having workflow management software. All can be encompassed in one statement – where you can view how your workflows.

What Does Workflow Management Software Do?

Workflow Management goes by different names, too; it is called Business Process Management or simply process management. You can view the entire process of your work flow. The system gives you visual objects you can perceive as components of your system, like tasks, resources, lists of activities, etc.

Most organizations and freelancers benefit a lot from a workflow tool. This aims at increasing productivity since you get a visual of the work that needs to be done. From managing the work at individual deadlines to automating recurring tasks, it becomes essential to monitor how the work is progressing and which levels the work passes through.

Workflow management software even allows you to make changes in the workflow. Components that constitute a workflow can be easily modified or moved around to adjust any change in objects. Workflow management software is an efficient program that includes the work management process and dynamically adheres to process changes within organizations or work channels.

Advantages of a Workflow Management Software

Because you are getting a visual regarding how the process and the various elements are moving, you can better judge and forecast changes that your system might undergo. Always remember – the organizational process is a piece of huge machinery in itself, and changing in one sector involves changes accordingly.

Let us look at some of the obvious benefits of having a workflow management system:

• Streamline and speed up the internal process because of manual reduction in work

• This naturally reduces rework and errors

• Also reduces inappropriately approved requests, contracts, hires, pay-offs

• Able to keep track upon every single request

• Enables to keep an eye on the performance and how better the scope can be changed for optimization

• Tasks are assigned and aligned as per the skill set of resources and allowed to undergo variation where required

• Overall monitoring of team progress

• Employees get a unified, personalized experience of using the system

• Easily switch from singular process to parallel tasks

• There is always 24*7 support that allows you to monitor requests and tasks

• Staff and management can better focus on value-added services for the organization

• A simple and better way of improving compliance with audit trails

• As an organization, you can keep an eye on licensing and save humongous expenses there

• Exponential reduction in paperwork and all the cost and waste associated with it

What are the Features of a Workflow Management System?

For every management system, there is always a list of must-haves that you should look forward to. This will help you analyze and understand which workflow management system is better for your organization. Let us look at these factors that will help you decide whether the system works for your organization as a whole:

• Easy Business Step creation:

  Always note that the simpler the steps, the longer and deeper the involvement with employees and customers alike. Based on your business model, the workflow has to be designed to ensure easy business acceptance creation. The process manager will always have a task creating a process because there will be denials and other hurdles of acceptance. The business model, therefore, can be easily perceived in the workflow management system.

• Reports based on KPI:

  There are certain Key Progress Indicators that every organization follows to keep track of all the progress and see if the numbers have been hit or not. Your workflow management system should have KPI-based reports that let you perceive the progress.

• Form Builders:

  Who doesn’t like interactive and customer-friendly forms that can be tweaked and worked upon easily? With attractive designs and professional touch, it becomes easy to create forms that can be used for end-users and internal communications.

• Instant Notifications:

  This one is one of the handiest features you should look for. Instant notifications keep everyone in the loop and informed regarding any workflow movement. As soon as work passes from one level to the next, the people in the loop are immediately aware of the change. This means that if some change is not due, you immediately get informed.

• Cloud-based systems:

  Most of the systems these days that you get are cloud-based software. You will find a very smaller number of standalone applications in the market. This is because most of the business models have gone online and cloud-based. The whole world is now remotely running its businesses. A cloud-based system makes it work more efficiently than a standalone application that binds you geographically.

• Flexible patterns:

  It doesn’t start, go one way and then stop. Workflow is of multiple types and multiple kinds. They loop in and go and repeat a process. Many workflows run in parallel and are also interdependent. It is essential that the workflow management system you go for allows you to have flexible patterns and composite functionalities.

• Role-based Access:

  Some workflows are not meant for a certain level of people. A workflow and everything that happens within the process might only be for the organization's top management. It is important that the workflow functions in the Role-based method. If access is given only to a certain number of people in the organization, then the workflow and everything within it will be shared within that closed group.

• SLA-based tracking:

  Definitely important that, as an organization, you keep checking the status of your work. The progress can be tracked at every step, and you can see whether you are going in the direction you want. Status indicators let you know how well a task is getting managed and progressing.

• Integrating cloud services:

  Not only does the workflow management system work efficiently, but you have to ensure that it allows you to integrate with other management systems or external third-party applications. Be it the payroll system or something like Salesforce, there has to be a mode to ensure that all these apps can be easily integrated within the system. This allows you to not worry about logging in separate spaces to check separate processes.

• Financial Friendly:

  At the end of the day, you have to ensure it doesn’t fall heavy on the organizational expenses. Workflow management systems have been designed and created with the intention of making the process simple and easy. However, it should be the one that causes a huge hole in the company's pocket. Make sure that you go for a system that is exactly suitable per your company's requirements.

Different Types of Workflow Management Systems

Workflows take place throughout the system. Some of the workflows might be structured, while some are not. Based upon the real need to have workflows, they have been primarily classified into three types:

• Process Workflow:

  This is considered to be mostly structured and standardized. Even before the next element of the workflow is activated, you get a clear idea that this will be the next step. Most of the business models and task creations go by the process workflow.

• Case Workflow:

  Case workflow may be unpredictable. This is specific to a case or a situation in the business. Something like support tickets that are raised in the organization – you may not know the future of the case and what action will be taken, so it is difficult to determine the flow of the process. After analyzing whatever is revealed, the next course of action depends on it.

• Project Workflow:

  Project workflow is very similar to process workflow. But they are open to any changes and parallel functioning along the way. If there is a huge modification that you are bringing to the business, there is a strong chance that you may come across many changes on the go. Since project workflows are for huge scales, changes are easily absorbed in the process.

Things to Look Before Getting a Workflow Management System

Just like the features that we saw for an ideal workflow management system, do consider some of the points below as a checklist for getting a system that works for your organization or freelancing work:

• The cost and value should be clear. There should be no hidden charges that you are unaware of. If there are any options of getting only certain modules within the system that you can use for your work, prefer to get those.

• Ensuring that the vendor company assists while implementing the program within your organization. Get it cleared from the vendor if experts are available on call for implementation and kick-starting.

• Vendors constantly fix bugs and release a patched version of the management system in the market. If certain functional bugs don’t allow you to use the system, make it a point you know how soon they will fix the bugs.

• System updates are as important as bug fixes. Stay in touch with the technical team or the in charge regarding system updates they do and when they do. If it is a standardized workflow management system, they may have a cycle for it.

• Customization is the word of the century. Almost all software existing in the world is now customizable. So, ensure you know there is a scope for your management system to get custom-made to suit your needs.

• Apart from the system itself, are there any add-ons or additional help that they offer? What support modes do they offer in case you need assistance from them?

•  Make sure that security is checked first. You are putting your organization’s valuable data into the system. You must know the different security levels and the plan if any breaches or leaks occur from their side.