Workflow integration into business processes
Integrating Workflow into business processes is an important part of an organization’s digital transformation. It helps them adapt to the changing needs of the market, customers and employees.
The goal of Workflow is to assign tasks to individual employees according to set rules so that the sequence of activities and tasks in the processing of a specific document and information is fulfilled. If a company can define constantly repeating scenarios into an algorithm, the information system can simplify, automate and streamline these processes as much as possible. The processing of routine tasks, which took a disproportionately long time before automation, are suddenly fast, operative and, moreover, can be monitored and controlled at any time. Approving leave, ordering a spare part, booking a car or approving an invoice reimbursement no longer has to be a matter of making phone calls, forwarding emails or filling out forms that then wander between employees for days or weeks.
Every modern company tries to eliminate or simplify and automate as much as possible especially unproductive processes that are essential for the normal running of the company. The integration of workflow into business processes can then bring, in addition to speeding up, streamlining and simplifying processes, a reduction in error rates and thus improve customer and employee satisfaction.
Today, digital workflow support is included in almost every information system, and systems such as SAP ECC or S/4HANA are no exception. Since the digitalization of processes is our main focus, we have already helped more than one customer with automation based on Workflow technology.
We are currently creating automation for one of them for the entire set of internal processes using SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP) technology. The customer came in about a year ago with the vision that their goal was to replace all written approval forms with digitization. Although the customer is currently still using the traditional on-premise version of SAP ECC 6.0 as their ERP system, they decided to do all of their automation in a Cloud environment. For this purpose, we prepared for him the state-of-the-art SAP BTP technology environment. Its main part, which users will work with in the new solution, is the SAP BTP WorkZone component. This cloud-based tool creates a web-based, unified, personalized and, above all, truly secure environment for everyday work. This solution, in contrast to standard SAP components, has several significant advantages. In addition to the availability of business applications anywhere in the world with secure access via the Internet, it allows applications to be connected to multiple SAP systems as well as other enterprise systems. This creates a central and unified access point for the customer to all their enterprise applications. Another benefit of this solution is the ability to get applications onto a mobile phone, tablet or even an Apple watch, allowing busy managers to control the running of the business by entering or approving tasks while waiting at the airport or doctor’s office 😊.
However, completely new possibilities are opened by a new technological cloud component called SAP Task Center, which is able to create workflow processes over multiple information systems and thus involve other employees in the automation process who have not had access to information systems so far.
Based on our experience, we see workflow as a really big and unique opportunity to enable businesses to work better, faster and more efficiently. We are therefore preparing some interesting technological innovations in this area that will further extend the possibilities of digitalization to other specific employee groups.
