While virtually all businesses always have at least one workflow, an enterprise often involves many workflows interconnected in a complex manner.
After all, an enterprise may involve different teams, departments, and many stakeholders and can potentially have tens or even hundreds of workflows to execute, monitor, and optimize.
This is where Enterprise Workflow Management (EWM) helps the enterprise map, execute, optimize, and even automate workflows.
What Is Enterprise Workflow Management
Enterprise Workflow Management, also often called Enterprise Work Management (EWM), is an effort to document, analyze, and optimize workflow(s) in an enterprise to ensure every workflow gets executed as efficiently as possible.
However, “enterprise workflow management” is also often used to refer to the enterprise work management software that enables us to implement workflow management on an enterprise scale.
In practice, EWM is executed in five different stages:
Phase1: Identifying workflows
Different departments and teams have their workflows in an enterprise environment, which can be challenging to track. Also, while some workflows are visible, others might not be easy to identify.
A core aspect of EWM implementation is to identify and list all the workflows in the enterprise.
Phase 2: Mapping and documenting workflows
Ideally, all workflows in the enterprise should get accurately mapped and documented. Solutions like Aproove allow enterprises to easily map and document workflows with a code-free, intuitive workflow builder to build workflow diagrams with a drag-and-drop approach.
By mapping and documenting workflows, we allow two things: standardization and accurate analysis.
Stakeholders can consult the workflow diagram to avoid confusion on how the workflow should be executed, and we can analyze the workflow diagram to identify bottlenecks and inefficiencies.
Phase 3: Workflow analysis
As mentioned, once a workflow has been mapped, we can analyze the workflow to identify any issues and inefficiencies. This phase aims to develop a comprehensive plan on how the workflow should be improved, which will be used in the next phase.
Phase 4: Workflow optimization
Based on the analysis results, this stage is about implementing changes to improve the efficiency of specific tasks or the whole workflow. If necessary and economically viable, automation may also improve the workflow’s consistency and efficiency.
Phase 5: Monitoring and evaluation
A growing enterprise will keep adding new workflows and change its existing workflows with time, so it’s crucial not to treat enterprise workflow management as a one-off effort but rather as a continuous thing.
Even the already-optimized workflows must be monitored and evaluated regularly. For example, a workflow that is already efficient may no longer be optimal when new technology gets introduced to the market
Why Do You Need Enterprise Workflow Management?
Enterprise Workflow Management essentially provides three things to an enterprise:
- Standardization: standardizing workflows so different stakeholders have the same vision of executing the workflow, eliminating confusion and potential errors.
- Optimization: ensuring all workflows are optimal and as efficient as possible.
- Automation: automating workflows are now crucial in many enterprises, yet automation is only viable when the workflow is already efficient, or else automation will amplify its inefficiencies.
By providing these three things, enterprise workflow management will ultimately produce the following benefits:
1. Improved enterprise productivity
By optimizing workflows to eliminate redundancies, bottlenecks, inefficiencies and ensure the workflow is as efficient as possible, the enterprise will also experience improved efficiency and productivity.
Proper implementation of Enterprise Workflow Management ensures all of the enterprise’s workflows (at least the most crucial ones) are properly mapped, documented, analyzed, optimized, automated, and monitored to ensure and maintain efficiency.
2. Reduce errors in execution
Enterprise workflow management enables standardization of workflow execution. It eliminates confusion between stakeholders, so the possibility of errors in each task within the workflow is significantly reduced.
With a clear workflow diagram provided by EWM, stakeholders can have an accurate vision of the task they are assigned to meet the defined requirements of this task accurately.
On the other hand, EWM allows us to trace the cause of the mistakes more efficiently, even when errors do happen.
3. Enterprise agility
Today’s business environment demands agility from enterprise. The implementation of Enterprise Workflow Management will ultimately improve an enterprise’s flexibility and agility.
With a core aspect of EWM being accurate mapping and documentation of workflows, understanding of workflows across departments is improved, so it’s easier to communicate and implement the changes when a new change must be implemented.
The implementation of changes is also straightforward, with the workflow diagram providing a more precise roadmap on how to implement these changes.
An agile enterprise is ultimately a more competitive and more scalable organization.
4. Ensuring compliance
Enterprise Workflow Management will ensure the enterprise can reduce or even eliminate risks of errors while at the same time ensuring all workflow executions comply with all relevant regulations and policies.
For example, organizations can implement strict guidelines to a workflow when needed and make sure the guidelines are easily accessible in the workflow documentation.
5. Improving team’s morale and productivity
A core issue in any enterprise is managing human resource issues like skill gaps between different team members and the potential of human errors. While EWM is also about automation, it’s virtually impossible to automate the whole enterprise fully, so human resource issues are still relevant.
With that being said, EWM implementation facilitates easier monitoring of workflows, so managers and executives can quickly identify these issues. For example, if a particular employee keeps making the same error in a specific task, management can take the necessary action quickly.
By reducing or eliminating these human resource issues and improving the efficiency of each workflow, enterprises can improve their team’s morale, increasing productivity and reducing turnover rate.
Closing Thoughts
Enterprise workflow management (EWM) allows enterprises to identify, document, analyze, and optimize all workflows that occur in their day-to-day operations. In turn, this will enable the enterprise to improve its team’s morale, efficiency in operations, and overall productivity.
While the initial investment of implementing EWM can be costly, in the long run, the costs will be justified with the benefits it provides.
