A workflow management system is one of the most important and overlooked software and strategy that many companies either missed out on or deemed unimportant. A workflow system can not only help to increase productivity in the company and decrease errors made, but it can also create a smooth process from when a task is being assigned to when it is completed.
To have a good Workflow Management System, here are the top 10 essential features that a company must include when designing their workflow management system to ensure that they can make the most out of it.
- An intuitive, code-free workflow design
Many people’s definition of being tech-savvy would be one’s ability to use Microsoft Word or Microsoft Excel. However, when thrown into a system that requires a large amount of coding, the person would most likely blank out. Hence it is crucial to ensure that the workflow management system requires little to no code needed to make it more user-friendly to the existing and future workers to use.
- Form Design
Forms are one of the most important parts of a workflow management system as it is how its users interact with the system. An unsophisticated form design would make it hard and confusing for its users to make use of and render the system useless. The best way to make a form easy and pleasant to use would be by the drag and drop method. It should be multi-columned, tabbed and consist of multiple pages. This is because similar to actual forms, they are long and complex and you would require tables, sections, text fields or drop-down selections.
- Instant and Automatic Validation
Most employees spend much of their time correcting mistakes such as missing or invalid data in their work or forms which is an absolute waste of time. The software should include validation features that help employees decrease and prevent mistakes that may occur. This time that is being saved can be used more productively on work that matters more like confirming deals with a client rather than incessantly check for mistakes in their work
- Built-In Mobility
Every workflow management software should be able to support smartphones, tablets and computers without external or extra effort. This allows workers to work both in-office or remotely regardless of their situation. It may be hard and costly to difficult to develop a mobile app specifically for its workers so a company must ensure that its workflow management system supports mobile.
- Notifications, Reminders & Escalations
A workflow management system should include functions that allow and individuals or persons to be notified when a new assignment is given to them. Every workflow management system shouldallow you to customize the notification, places links to perform specific or common actions and send it out automatically, typically in an email form. The notification should also be concise and to the point, including all the information need as most people are commonly bombarded with emails and may not be able to read through a 5-page long assignment description.
- Integration
A workflow management system will prove to be more useful if it can make use of data from external databases, the web or even back-end systems and save all the data and documents into a unified database in the shape of an electronic document management system. This is extremely crucial especially if a company is switching from a previous database system that contained a plethora of important data that would be tedious and may result in high amounts of mistakes if converted by hand.
- Security, Authentication & Access Control
Internal business processes such as purchase orders or expense accounts will contain highly sensitive and confidential data, hence a workflow management system needs to be focused and concerned about its data security to prevent a possible data breach.
- Analyse and Optimise Reports
A workflow management system helps a company improve their processes to allow employees to focus on more productive work. Which the large scale of data that many companies have to manage every single day, it is important to have analytical tools to help companies analyse their workflow and their data that is easily viewed and read.
- Accountability
A good workflow management system helps maintain a record of all activities – who did what and when. This means that the company can keep track of who is on task with their work and who isn’t. They are also able to see where each employee or team is in with their work without having to have calls or meetings just to update each other on their processes.
- Customizable
Every company’s needs are different and a good workflow management system should be able to cater to the specific needs of a company to best suit them.
I cannot stress enough how important it is for a company to have a good workflow management system as it can drastically increase productivity within the company. The goal of every company should be to grow and in order to do that, a workflow management system should be put in place to not only help a company grow, it also creates ample space for growth in the future.