DOCUMENT WORKFLOW

SMOOTH THE DOCUMENT PATHS THROUGH YOUR BUSINESS AND BOOST YOUR EFFICIENCY Did you know you use document workflows every day? If you have ever had to obtain approval for a proposal, expenses or some other important document from another person, then this is a document workflow. Put simply, if there is more than one person involved in the process then this step-by-step procedure is known as document workflow. You probably know first-hand that workflows can be frustrating. Think about how you handle the logistics of getting a document to the right people for approval. Do

MAKE YOUR DOCUMENTS

you send it by email or request a meeting? And what about proof of approval? Do you have to save multiple emails

FLOW

and meeting notes? Consider all the future problems you could face if you’re unable to demonstrate you attained approval from the right people. Electronic document workflow automates the steps in a process, simplifies work tasks and provides real-time monitoring to optimise any document-based business routing.

Systems Technology can help you design and implement a document workflow solution to help your business become more efficient.

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Automate repetitive tasks Automate the approval process

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Reduce staff paper processing costs

Version 1.1

Reduce the time and cost of moving paper between offices

Stop lost documents Improve customer service by quickly locating

Improve efficiency in managing and tracking paper based workflow

Bring together related documents

documents and the stage they’re at

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••

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Meet compliance requirements for audit or security

SCANNING WHAT IS

AND CAPTURE DOCUMENT WORKFLOW?

Definition of Document Workflow “Document workflow is the journey of documents between people or groups of people. Business processes typically involve such distribution with different persons responsible for creating, updating, reviewing and approving documents.”

The problems with paper-based workflows In most organisations today, paper-based information is maintained independently from the electronic workflow and is, therefore, subject to numerous problems. Paper based information:

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Is hard to locate Is easily lost or misplaced Is expensive to distribute

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Is hard to protect Is difficult to link to other electronic content Is inflexible

Paper-based workflows, even for the smallest organisations, are inherently inefficient and prone to failure. Businesses are increasingly turning toward scanning solutions to bring paper into electronic workflows and solve these problems. Once in an electronic form, documents can be located and shared easily, backed-up and integrated with other systems.

How an electronic document workflow helps An electronic document workflow can automate the flow of information in your organisation to eliminate the errors, interruptions and duplications of your manual paper-based workflows. By identifying business steps that are definable and repeatable the time taken complete each step can be reduced, reducing the overall document cycle time and reducing errors. Document workflows allow you quickly to define, create, and manage automated business processes where tasks and work procedures are repeatable. If a task is repeatable and can be defined then, it can be created and managed as part of an automatic document workflow.

GUIDE TO COMMON WORKFLOWS Accounts Payable Increase speed and reduce AP costs Perhaps the most prominent application for document workflow is in Automated Invoice Processing. Using the full range of features, purchases orders and invoices are scanned, and their data captured using OCR, extracted, matched, coded, authorised and stored. Automatic Invoice Processing offers faster processing speed at a reduce costs, with enhanced visibility and control. The improvement in accuracy provides better data quality, assisting the approval process and enhancing cash management and accounts payable insight.

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Automate invoice processing Reduce administration costs Enhance data quality and accuracy Improve cash management Benefit from early payment discounts

Contract Workflow

Sales Order Processing

Reduce risk and speed up approval Before you sign on the dotted line, it pays to make sure

Take the pain out of sales paperwork processing

your contracts have been through the right workflow.

Sales order processing, particularly in the B2B market, is

Contract Workflow and Approval processes exist to

still incredibly slow. Salesmen’s handwritten paper orders

reduce the cost of reviewing low risk deals and to

need manually checking by sales managers before being

streamline the review of high risk deals. Low risk deals

sent to sales administration for ordering and onward

can be automatically approved, whereas high risk

to accounts, which can take days. If you’re in such as

deals can be routed through the legal departments or

business, think about the number of steps involved and

commercial departments before executive approval.

the problems that can occur with lost documents and query resolution. With sales order processing workflows,

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Automatically approve low risk deals

we can help you to create agile steps to fulfil your orders

Route high risks deals for review

within specific timelines.

Reduce overall contract administration costs Ensure accuracy through revision and approval Reduce contact review bottlenecks

•• •• •• ••

Remove bottlenecks Quickly resolve order queries Track progress Fulfil orders more quickly

Digital Mail Room Reduce customer response times and decrease poor information management Stop wasting time and resouces by manually distributing mail. Use a workflow to capture, sort and distribute mail within your organisation more effectively and provide complete traceability.

Customer Services Improve your customer service by processing customer correspondence faster If there’s one thing that can dramatically improve customer service, it is speed of response. You most likely already have customer engagement procedures to help respond to customer correspondence, applications or complaints. A Customer Service Workflow helps to speed up and improve your existing customer engagement procedures by streamlining and improving these processes. A good example is being able to set the priority of the request, helping to ensure that urgent cases aren’t ‘lost in a pile’ and are responded to first.

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Enhance customer engagement Resolve complaints quickly Increase accountability Prioritise response Document the process

Human Resources

Finance

Save time and provide a quicker service for employees and managers

Reduce your costs and increase financial control

Using HR Document Workflows your departmental

Accounts department’s least productive time is spent

functions can be brought online. Existing recruitment

processing expenses and other ad hoc business costs,

processes, leave requests, detail change administration

which rely on submissions being made on time and

and leaver processing workflows can all be sped up and

in the correct format. A document workflow makes

optimising by using a document workflow system. Even

the submission, reviewing and authorisation of such

simple yet time consuming processes, such as holiday

finance tasks more streamlined; taking up less time and

requests, can be handled more efficiently, freeing up

resulting in reimbursements happening more quickly.

managers to be more productive and profitable.

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Holiday request forms Sickness forms Job applications CRB checks Employee onboarding and offboarding

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Expenses Travel expenses Credit card statement processing Mobile phone bills

STEP 1

STEP 1 WORKFLOW WORKFLOW STEPS STEPS

All workflows consist of a series of logical steps, where each step is a decision, process or task that needs to happen. Using a flowchart can be a helpful way to visualise the process and to design and implement the workflow. We can help guide you through this process.

Individual and group workflows If you think about your organisation, there are individuals who perform certain tasks, and departments or teams where anyone can perform a task. Workflows can reflect this by allocating tasks to individuals or groups, where any member of that group can complete the task.

Workflow Automation OCR

It is possible for certain steps to be fully automated, removing the need for an operator’s involvement and freeing them up for other tasks. Zonal OCR is used with specific documents to recognise a variable’s value (e.g. an amount of money) and rules to determine the next step.

OVER £100?

NO

A good example is purchase approval: a purchase request below a set amount of money can be automatically progressed for order, anything above this amount can be

YES

forwarded for a manger’s approval.

Serial and Parallel Tasks In most workflows the tasks are assigned one-by-one in a logical order and participants are given an amount of time to complete their task – these are known as serial tasks. But sometimes tasks need to be assigned to all participants at once with one due date for all – these are known as parallel tasks. Using serial and parallel tasks gives you the flexibility to get tasks done faster.

PARALLEL

SERIAL

Delegation Options Where suitable, workflows can be designed by the Workflow Manager to allow participants to delegate their task to another person. This flexibility allows authorised employees with spare capacity to perform tasks that would otherwise become bottlenecked in the process.

Add documents and objects As a workflow progresses through its stages, participants can add documents and digital files to support the desired outcome. For example, this could be an audio file of a customer complaint or a photograph of damaged product, helping to resolve the task in hand far more quickly.

Document Matching Manual processes that require documents to be matched up can be automated using document workflows. For example, invoice and purchase orders can be matched using the PO number and forwarded to the accounts team for approval.

Quality Control Checkpoints Just like a paper-based workflow, managers of workflows

PURCHASE ORDER #1

can review a defined sample of processed documents for quality control purposes. This is particularly important

INVOICE #1

DELIVERY NOTE #1

for new staff or reviews of experienced staff for quality assurance.

7% of information workers’ total time is spent dealing with problems and time consuming tasks that arise with paper documents1.

1

Bridging the Information Worker Productivity Gap, IDC Whitepaper, 2012

STEP 2

NOTIFICATIONS AND APPROVAL

Your workflow has been designed and there are documents on the move. But what happens if a person is away, or if there is an unexpected document type, and what about approval? Workflow Managers maintain their workflows using a suite of automated tools for notifications, approval, workflow escalation and exception handling.

Workflow Manager This is the person that is alerted if tasks aren’t actioned or completed on time. They can send automated reminders, increase the deadlines or allocate the task to a different user.

TASK

Notifications Users can receive an email, pop up, or both, notifying them of the required actions for their step. Notifications can be sent immediately or at a pre-set number of days, or hours, before the task is due.

Conditional Steps Conditional steps require certain conditions to be met before allowing the process to continue. For example, an invoice may require the approval of both the manager and director before being progressed to the accounts department.

Signatures Even though the process a travelling through the authorisation stage is usually sufficient, sometimes a visual representation of authorisation is needed. Documents can be signed using a saved image of a handwritten signature, a digital stamp (e.g. APPROVED), or the typed name of the person who gave the authorisation.

Approval When a document requires approval it can be assigned to either an individual or group using serial or parallel tasks. The participants can typically approve or reject the document and provide notes to support their decision. If authorised, they may reassign the task to an authorised

APPROVE? REJECT? EXPLANATION:

person or group, or request a change to the workflow.

Workflow Accounts Sales Service Warehouse

Status OK OK OK EXCEPTION

Exception Handling While most well designed workflows run smoothly, there are exceptions. The cause of these exceptions could be a deadline being overrun, a new document type or perhaps a resource that isn’t available. Exception Handling gives participants the options to automatically or manually flag and action documents that would otherwise stall or get lost in a paper-based workflow.

Workflow Escalation If each person performs their task then a workflow is

2 DAYS

successful, but what if a person is unexpectedly ill or away? Workflow Escalation rules can handle these situations. For example, if John doesn’t review a document within two days then it is escalated to his manager. Tasks not performed within the allotted time will be notified to the Workflow Manager.

41% of organisations that are using MPS are also implementing document workflow tools to improve business processes2

2

Managing Print Service Landscape, Quocirca, 2014

STEP 3

STEP 3 COMPLIANCE, COMPLIANCE, SECURITY SECURITY AND AND AUDITING AUDITING

With the prospect of important documents flowing electronically around your business, how can you reassure others about security concerns? With compliance and auditing being key considerations for most businesses, it’s comforting to know that Document Workflow software enhances security. From requiring authentication at the point of scan, to role based permissions and versioning, there’s a full audit trail for every document throughout its life.

Version Document te a D 1.2 User SALES ORDER 1 0 / 12 r te N 1 Pe PRESENTATIO 1 0 / 13 y 1 Ashle PENSES EX 1 0 / 14 1.4 Sharon REPORT 1 0 / 15 1.2 Craig SALES ORDER 1 0 / 16 James

Auditing Trails & Version History All participants’ workflow steps are tracked in the version history. Each time they create, update, review or approve a document, or task, their activity is logged. Granular information including the time and date of the interactions ensures compliance with data regulations

PERMISSIONS READ CONTRIBUTE

Permissions When designing a document workflow process the Workflow Manager decides who receives a document and what they may do with it. For example, they may be able to Read the document, but not Edit it. Permissions ensure the security of your documents as they travel through your business.

Digital Signatures

I hereby agree and digitally sign the content of all pages

If compliance dictates it, digital signatures can be made necessary in order to progress the workflow to the next stage.

PASSWORD

*********

SIGN

Authentication Scanning takes a paper document and converts it into a digital file that can enter the workflow via a multifunctional photocopier, desktop scanner, touch screen scan stations or desktop PC. To prevent unauthorised access at the start, or any stage, users can be required to authenticate with their network ID.

Role Based Security

ROLE READ CONTRIBUTE ASSIGN Director Manager Supervisor Administrator

Role based security ensures that an important process can only be moved to the next stage by an authorised person. For example, in a contract approval process only the user that has been marked as the owner can approve the document. Permission control is easily configured for individual users, user groups or user roles. For example, a manager or supervisor.

15% of an organisation’s revenues are spent on creating, managing and distributing documents3

3

The Paperless Project, 2013

STEP 4

INTEGRATION AND BACKUP

A document workflow is the journey of your document from the start to the finish. The start typically involves scanning a paper document and converting it into a digital file, but what happens to that file at the finish? Document workflow solutions integrate with a host of back-end systems to archive and back-up all documents and workflow related objects for reference and retrieval.

Document Management System The most common destination for documents at the end of their workflow is a document management system. Somewhat similar to traditional filing, captured documents can be filed for reference at a later date. Unlike a traditional filing room, these documents can be quickly retrieved and securely accessed from both inside and outside the office. For more information see our Document Management brochure or visit our website.

ERP & Bespoke Enterprise Resource Planning software comes in many hundreds, if not thousands of guises. It provides support for manufacturing and service delivery, product planning, sales and marketing, inventory management, and much more. Document workflows can be successfully integrated with the majority of ERP systems, in businesses of all sizes, using existing APIs or custom development.

Accountancy Systems Invoice and payment queries are the bane of all accounts departments. Delivery notes, purchase orders and other related documents are often needed to resolve these queries, which takes up a huge amount of time. Document

Workflows

can

channel

transactional

documents directly into customer accounts and records within accountancy systems, such as Sage Line 50, QuickBooks and Microsoft Dynamics GP. With the requisite information at accountancy staff’s fingertips, resolutions and therefore cash flow can be dramatically improved.

CRM Systems For sales led organisations, the central repository for customer interactions is most likely a CRM system. Sales Order Processing workflows and Customer Service Workflows can feed directly into the relevant customer records in systems such as Salesforce.com and Sage ACT! Not only are workflow records backed-up but the sales team have a 360 degree view of all historical customer communications, helping to assist and increase sales.

50% of companies feel they would be more productive through enhanced workflow,

search,

information

reporting

and

automated

document creation tools4

4

The SharePoint Puzzle, AIIM Market Research, 2012

IMPLEMENTATION

IMPLEMENTATION OUR OUR PROFESSIONAL PROFESSIONAL SERVICES SERVICES

Document workflows can range from just two simple steps, all the way to complex multistage processes involving dozens of participants and tasks. However easy or complicated your workflows are, Systems Technology’s professional services team will work side-by-side with you to provide you with training, help you design your workflows, and provide support for how long you choose.

Our simple guide to implementing document workflows There is really no reason for businesses to continue using outdated and inefficient workflow processing methods given today’s availability of

Pick a familair workflow or process

affordable and easy to use workflow software. Yet many businesses continue to do so, despite knowing better. One of the questions we often get asked by prospective customers considering a document workflow is, “Where do we begin?” With so many

Breakdown the process into the actual physical steps

existing business processes the task can seem a little daunting. Our answer is to start with just one. By following the existing workflow steps through to the end, you’ll have mapped out a design that’ll be good enough to try. A common way of

Spend time with each person involved along the way

visualising this is to draw a flowchart. It doesn’t have to be perfect, but the act of drawing your processes can be very enlightening and, perhaps, fun. You might not get it right first time, but you’re on your way to dramatically improving your business processes.

Quantifying the results

Discover what tasks occur at each step and the exceptions for each decision

When you make the transition to automating document workflows in your business, you should be able to measure improvement in your processes. The obvious starting point is the time it takes completely to process documents from start to finish. If you perform a simple time study on the process before and after implementing your electronic document workflow solution, you can compare the average process time from start to finish.

Follow where the document goes once it leaves that step

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