Process automation and collaboration:
C-Business (Cont..)

What will drive this change?

Business is more than just interactions and transactions. Now that most companies have adopted the web for transactions and communications, they now plan to use the web to form a collaborative-centric business model.

Why? Collaboration enables greater speed in delivery, quality and consistency in services and products. In addition to this, they are leveraging the knowledge and information resident in their employees, customers and partners to gain a competitive edge.
Application users in today's scenario are not just the one's directly connected to the enterprise, but also include the virtual enterprise network and its players. In addition to the new work economy and its needs, the shift from EAI to Business Process Integration (BPI) will provide another impetus for this change.

Drilling down to workflows within an organization, we can boldly label workflow as the key enabler of the adaptive, responsive organization. Re-engineering business processes within an organization is a sign of a mature organization and process automation takes it there. Automating workflows and following a set of processes when documents, information and tasks are routed from one participant to another in the most proficient method possible.

What are the kinds of workflows?

Administrative or ad hoc workflow: The most generic type that automates numerous different processes and relies on email for transport.

Transaction-oriented workflow: Revenue-generating category that can involve complex business processes like mortgage application processing, insurance claims writing and the like.

Collaborative workflow: Automate business critical processes that are not transaction oriented. Collaborative process management and workflow enabling requirements like document sharing and management.

Reasons to consider workflow management

• Encourage higher workload capacity
• Reduce process time and improve process quality
• Eliminate elapsed time between tasks
• Monitor the current state of workflow and it's progress against the project plan
• Efficient task delivery
• Timely delivery of information
• Tighter control over the distribution of work
• Elimination of duplication of tasks
• Alerts to warn tasks that are slipping
• Discourage function-based activities and encourage critical business thinking with the organization in mind