Why Workflow

Define, document and optimize business processes

Cut down on bureaucracy that slows everyone down. By creating an efficient workflow that accurately maps to real-world events, you can drastically cut-down the time it takes to get things done. Decisions can be made faster, by the right people, and with the correct information they need to know. Important changes can be correctly documented, approved and implemented (see Change Management), and decisions can be made either automatically based on data, or by staff that are presented with the relevant options.

Automation

Workflow helps you to automate common and recurring tasks. Build the workflow once, and then automate it. Use for:

• Interoperability of business units
• Scripts (database, powershell, file transfers, server maintenance etc)
• Escalations, Notifications
• Alerts and Triggered events

Processs consistency

Workfow allows your business to perform the same things in the same way, time and time again. This optimizes your processes, reduces the need for training, and speeds everything up. Use for:

• HR. On-boarding new employees simply follow the steps.
• Software development. Bug tracking, integration, deployment etc.
• IT Service Management. Incident, Problem and Change Management

Reduce training of new and existing staff

When a process has been designed and implemented as a HelpMaster workflow, the execution of that process becomes a lot easier.

Continuous Improvement.

Over time, workflows within HelpMaster will naturally change, be refined and updated as business process change and process maturity increases. All of these things contribute significantly to continuous improvement.

Discover, document and diagnose business processes. When you make a HelpMaster workflow, you’re really discovering, documenting and diagnosing your existing business processes. This is good for the business, for staff members and end-users. By nature, workflow and processes are self-documenting to a certain extent. As you build workflow, take the extra time to fill-in the meta-data, or properties of each step. This will contribute to the documentation and ease of use of the process, as well as providing a good foundation for business documentation.

Satisfy audits. Increasingly, regulatory and legislative compliance requires proof and demonstrable evidence of certain processes and tasks. By working against well-defined, self-descripting workflows, you can increase your business operations collatoral to satisfy audits.

Integration with business systems and other business units.

Workflow allows you to integrate and share data and information with other business units and team members. Information and data can be read from, and transferred to:

• Active Directory
• SQL Server
• Sharepoint
• Human Resources / Personnel
• Facilities Management
• Microsoft 365 (Flow etc.) Using Powershell

Communication / Collaboration / Notification

• Improve Team awareness by incorporating messaging into a workflow.This will keep people “in the loop” and help them to understand process/operations that are taking palce
• Workflow assists in understanding business processes by visually displaying where you are up to in a process
• Notify people only when they have something to do in the next step of the workflow

Data

Workflow assists in capturing, storing and reporting on data and information. By building data-capture and validation into a business process, you ensure that all relevant details and data are captured at the right time. Use this data later in reports to:

• Aggregate, and Integrate into other processes
• Report on captured data and information
• Build KPIs / Statistics for business operations and tasks
• Define and maintain business SLA / OLA
• Build dashboards by using Business Intelligence BI tools such as PowerBI, Excel and others

Financial

Workflow assists with economic management by providing a structured, repeatable process for a given task. This improves efficiency and can assist driving down costs:

• Lower TCO
• Efficiency in process execution = Improvments in the bottom line

Legislative Compliance

Workflow and strict business operational processes may be required from policy and legaslative bodies. By building and working through a standard set of operational steps for a given task you can document and provide accurate audit logs for auditors, compliance checks, records management requirements and more. Workflow gives you the ability to report on who did what, when and where.

See Also

Workflow Overview