Workflow management is a discipline focusing on how organizations digitize and eventually automate their business processes. In this article, we are giving an overview of workflow management, the key related concepts, and how it helps optimize processes within the organization.
The article will elaborate on the following topics:
A workflow is a sequence of steps that brings the desired business result and requires coordinated input from different people or systems. Therefore, the success of a workflow depends on the contribution, communication, and collaboration of those people and systems.
An example of a workflow is the actions involved in onboarding of a new employee. Let’s imagine there are only three actions required: creating a corporate email account, arranging a welcome team meeting, and assigning a mentor for the new employee. In this case, the visualization of the workflow may look like this.
The following components describe this workflow:
Many use the term “workflow” to describe how they use productivity tools like calendar apps and task managers to navigate their personal tasks. Search for “productivity workflow” on YouTube to get some inspiration! However, in this article, we’ll focus on workflow management in the business context.
Every organization deals with numerous workflows to maintain business operations. Workflow management and automation are highly applicable to IT service management due to the clear and well-defined stages that support tickets typically follow. Contact our sales team to learn more about Alloy Navigator, our solution for IT service and IT asset management. The product has one of the market’s most flexible workflow management systems.
While in business these terms, workflow and process, are often used interchangeably, there is still a distinction between the two.
According to a definition given in the Merriam-Webster dictionary, a process is “a series of actions or operations conducing to an end.” In contrast, a workflow is described as “the sequence of steps involved in moving from the beginning to the end of a working process.”
Simply put, a workflow is a set of rules that supports a process from the start to the result. If a process is a “what”, then a workflow is a “how.” For instance, in the process of employee onboarding, there is a workflow that brings this process to life by describing the steps and the dependencies between them.
Let’s take the task management workflow in a small team as an example. Once the manager creates a ticket, a workflow starts. In this case, a workflow is a mechanism, a set of predefined steps that supports work on this task: sending reminders to the assignee as the due time approaches and updating the manager on the progress via email. Whereas the word “process” is more abstract, representing the overall concept of ticket resolution.
If you still find the distinction unclear, relax. In real life, it’s not that important to know the exact difference. It’s more important to understand the value and implications of both concepts. If you approach processes as workflows consisting of steps and connections between those steps, you can automate tasks and save time.
The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines lifecycle as “a series of stages through which something (such as an individual, culture, or manufactured product) passes during its lifetime.” In ITSM (IT service management), a lifetime typically refers to the duration when a particular asset is in use and brings value to the organization. For example, a laptop goes through the following stages during its lifecycle: acquisition, usage, repair, hardware updates, and depreciation. Collectively, these stages form the laptop’s lifecycle.
On the other hand, a workflow describes the steps needed to achieve a specific result and the dependencies between these steps. For example, when this laptop crashes, a repair request by its owner triggers the repair workflow.
The following characteristics can be helpful in describing a workflow:
Business process management has a broader scope than workflow management. It aims to increase the efficiency of the business processes across the enterprise. Workflow management, on the other hand, is responsible for the optimization and coordination of activities within specific repetitive tasks. Therefore, workflow management is often only part of larger business process management campaigns.
To understand the difference, let’s look at the activities typical for each domain. Business process management activities may include the following:
As for workflow management, its usual practices might be:
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Workflow management and project management are two distinct management disciplines. They are not directly related, but often their practices overlap.
To gain a better understanding of the distinction between workflows and projects, let’s compare the two concepts. People confuse them because both projects and workflows have an end goal and consist of tasks. By completing these tasks, the desired goal is achieved. Most importantly, both projects and workflows serve as tools for reaching a specific result. However, these two concepts differ at the core. A project manages tasks that lead to a particular goal by coordinating people, time, and resources. On the other hand, a workflow is a way to organize an ongoing multi-stage process by building the optimal dependencies between the stages.
Project and workflow management revolves around the optimization and enhancement of these respective endeavors.
Workflow management makes daily tasks easier and helps avoid tedious manual jobs. Let’s delve deeper into the advantages that all of this brings to the business.
These best practices will help you get started with workflow management or improve the existing procedures:
However, if all you have is a pen and paper, or a text document file, you could use this simple Workflow mapping template. At Alloy Software, we use it when strategizing a new workflow.
It contains the following columns:
The scheme works very well for documenting previously undigitized processes.
A workflow management system is a software tool that helps you manage workflows by leveraging automation, analytics, integrations with other apps, and other tech-enabled mechanisms.
Workflow management is most commonly only a part of the feature set that a software provider offers to solve a particular business problem. Popular business apps like Office 365 and Slack also have workflow management features, although they are not the main focus of these applications.
Workflow management is part of Alloy Navigator’s offering, as well. The out-of-the-box version of our product comes with a variety of pre-installed standard workflows that you can customize or build upon to suit your needs. With Alloy Navigator, you can apply workflow automation to any object in your IT infrastructure and involve external apps without cumbersome integrations. Book a call with our sales team to learn more about Alloy Navigator.
Well, you should have done this yesterday 😊
People might search for workflow management software based on different needs. If you’re a manager in a small team and wonder if you need some workflow automation tool, we recommend starting with these simple steps:
If you work for a larger company, chances are you’ve already had some experience designing and automating workflows for the team. Choosing workflow management software is more challenging as you need to take more into account: integrations with other related systems, data migration, and the learning curve.
Below, we’re bringing a list of critical features that differentiate one workflow management system from another. When choosing workflow management software, prepare to decide what your needs are in each of these aspects:
Workflow experts from our sales team will help you analyze your ITSM needs and make the most out of Alloy products. Reach out to us!
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