What is a workflow? What companies can do workflow?

Workflow originated in the fields of production organization and office automation. It is a concept put forward for business process activities in daily work. Its purpose is to decompose the work into clearly defined tasks or roles, implement these tasks and monitor them according to certain principles and processes, so as to achieve the purpose of improving efficiency, controlling processes, improving customer service and enhancing effective management of business processes.

In order to better achieve some business goals, computers can be used to automatically transfer documents, information content or tasks among many participants according to certain established principles.

Therefore, as long as information is transmitted between people, between people and systems, and between systems, it is necessary to build a workflow.

Workflow types What workflows occur throughout the workspace, some structured and some unstructured? Workflow exists when data is transferred from one task to another. However, if the data does not flow, there is no workflow. For example, walking the dog, going to the grocery store and picking up dry cleaning clothes are not workflows, but task management.

The main workflows include the following three types:

1. process workflow (process workflow)

Process workflow occurs when a set of tasks is predictable and repetitive. In other words, before the project starts the workflow, you have made clear the direction of the data flow. For example, the workflow of purchasing application approval, once the application is submitted, every step of processing is relatively fixed, and the workflow will hardly change.

2. Project Workflow (Project Workflow)

A project has a structured path similar to a process, but it may be more flexible in this process. Project workflow is only applicable to one project. For example, if you publish a new version of a website, you can accurately predict the task flow of the project, but this task flow does not apply to the publication of another website.

3. Case workflow (case workflow)

In the case of workflow, the direction of data flow is not clear. Only when a large amount of data is collected will the direction of data flow become more obvious. For example, I didn't know how to deal with insurance claims at first, and only after some investigation will it be clear.

Automated workflow and manual workflow In a manual workflow, one person must always track the application and manually send it to each applicant. For example, when an employee fills out an expense report, she must email it to the manager for approval. After the manager approves it, she must send it to the finance department by email. After the financial department receives it, it needs to make payment and notify the employees that the payment has been completed by email.

In an automated workflow, when a task is completed manually, she is not responsible for passing the data to the next person. The system will automatically manage the task flow, including notifications, deadlines, reminders, etc., and finally it will be automatically sent to the financial department for processing.

In the manual workflow, the spreadsheet must be updated manually, and a large number of messages and emails need to be sent to understand the status of the project. In an automated workflow, you can directly see the tracked items in the system. Therefore, automated workflow can save a lot of manual operation time and operation errors for employees and significantly improve work efficiency.

Companies that value workflow management will use workflow management software. To manage workflow with PowerSoft, you need to create a rich form and establish a clear process according to your requirements. Then, the applicant fills in the initial form, and the software will automatically process the application data until it is completed. Finally, there will be cases where visual reports display data.

Benefits of workflow automation 1. Eliminate redundant tasks and improve efficiency.

Collecting information through soft workflow can abandon the use of Excel to fill in and automatically sort out the data. Chatting online through PowerSoft workflow can abandon the use of WeChat QQ communication. Finally, through the data analysis of soft workflow, you can give up manually creating data reports. These three links can eliminate redundant tasks and improve efficiency.

2. A higher degree of visualization

Powerful report function allows you to quickly analyze data and clearly follow up the implementation of the project.

3. Clear the responsibility of the person in charge of each node.

No matter which workflow type is adopted, the work can be assigned to the person in charge of each node, and the operation content of each step can be viewed through the process log, which is convenient for the confirmation and tracking of later responsibilities.