Enable Your Remote Team By Automating Your Approval Workflows
Most, if not all, business processes require approvals for it to be completed. Doing this manually is usually laborious and painfully slow. It can be done through routing paperwork or by exchanging emails and tracking progress by following up through email, phone call, or SMS.
It usually involves multiple people and approvals, making it prone to endless delays.
(Related Article: Document management gone digital: the rise of automated file routing and compliance management)
Businesses will greatly benefit when approval workflows are automated as they will be able to achieve the following:
- Easy request submission as it is done filling a pre-built online request form, and being able to upload attachments as needed
-
Faster approvals since approvers receive notifications through email as soon as the request is submitted, so they can easily review and approve requests online
-
Flexibility since it can designate an alternate approver to cover for the original approver’s absence to avoid interruption in the flow of the request
-
Reduction in errors since approvers can loop back the requests that contain errors, and easily provide instructions with its built-in process messaging tool
-
Complete documentation as each step in a workflow can come with a checklist to make sure that an item wouldn’t be missed
-
Ability to track the progress of workflows individually, or filter all the workflows according to its status, and even search for specific workflows
-
Auditable workflows since each workflow include a date & time stamp, and the users involved in it
Here are some of the other workflows that you can automate in your organization:
-
HR Leave Approvals
-
On-Boarding
-
Case Management
-
ISO Processes
- Invoice Approval
-
Requisition / Procurement
-
Loan Approvals
-
Regulatory Submissions
How can workflow automation help your business in the long run?
Using a workflow automation tool in managing request and approval processes is a surefire way to increase their speed and significantly improve efficiency. It can remove the tedious task of manual routing, collection of data and signatures, filing, and reporting.
It can scale from simple to the most complex request workflows, simplifying these repetitive and time-consuming administrative tasks.
An approval process that could take over a week will be reduced to less than a day. It will greatly decrease the burden of the employees and help yield higher productivity because more time will be spent on critical tasks.
For industries such as Financial Services, it would mean greater satisfaction of the customers and gaining a competitive advantage if, for instance, the back-end process of loan application is done automatically. Reviewing the applications and reaching to a decision would be 60% faster. These factors impact a company’s bottom line.
For companies practicing a remote-work setup, workflow automation would connect the people, departments, and the operational processes. You are assured that the operations are running smoothly as there is more transparency to processes.
For contract manufacturers with highly-regulated products, there is a larger responsibility in ensuring that the product is of the highest standards, which is why there are Quality Assurance procedures in place. When workflows such as Quality Assurance is standardized and automated, contract manufacturers can ensure that the right process is being followed at the prescribed time and be able to mitigate the errors early on in the process.
Since workflow automation provides an audit trail, these workflows are auditable, which can help manufacturing companies pass internal and customer audits.
Workflow Automation with Activity Factory
There are so many ways you can utilize a workflow automation tool—it could be in purchasing, sales operations, human resources, or finance. Start by identifying the workflows that are repetitive, prone to delays, and consumes most of your time.
You can also utilize the digital signature feature within your automated workflows for a speedy signing process.
To find out more about how Activity Factory can assist your organization and bring operational excellence, get in touch with us! We serve organizations of all sizes across different industries, in the private & public sectors.
Activity Factory is a workflow automation tool that allows companies to build consistent and auditable compliance and operational workflows, ensuring that the right processes are followed at the right times while staying compliant.
