Workflow: The New Generation
The Internet has changed the dynamics of workflow. Once relegated to the department, workflow has now gone companywide—and beyond. The challenge is to design and deploy an infrastructure that cost-effectively automates business processes, leverages vast stores of enterprise content and uses the Internet to foster collaboration with the entire trading community.
Workflow is not a new technology by any means. But until recently, workflow applications have been mostly restricted to back-office operations like invoice processing, in which a set number of tasks could be automated to accelerate them and reduce the possibility of error. Workflow involved employees. With thick-client technology, how could it be otherwise? Including a customer, partner or supplier—or an infrequent, internal user—would drive up costs and make administration prohibitively complex.
Introducing “Webflow”
The Web and browsers have changed all that. The boundaries between enterprises have fallen. Anyone—inside or outside the enterprise—can access any application with a browser and proper authorization. Workflows are now inter-enterprise. This shift from client/server to Web-based workflow systems is enabled by advances in Web technology and driven by the demands of businesses to automate and improve business processes that extend outside the enterprise.
Closing the loop: The next-generation workflow system that is emerging to meet this need doesn’t just route paper. It delivers a closed-loop system in which an external business process such as an online loan application is seamlessly tied to the back-office process for loan approval, creating an automated round-trip workflow that increases the efficiency and speed of applying for, and receiving, a loan. Web customers expect instant results and your business processes must deliver them.
Web architecture: The best of these systems are entirely Web-based. End users and administrators use only a standard browser, eliminating the costs of adding users and allowing full participation by infrequent users and those outside the organization. On the server, Java-based architecture allows the workflow system to benefit from the services of Web application servers such as load balancing, session management and security management.
Smart workflow: The new workflow system integrates process, content, people and systems—inside and outside the firewall. It makes intelligent choices about how tasks are routed in order to maximize throughput, avoiding human intervention except when absolutely necessary. Smart workflows work and play well with other applications and with other workflow systems—they automate as much as possible and deliver a smooth, uninterrupted process that may weave in and out of different applications and seamlessly hand off tasks between people and computers.
The Content Connection
Content and workflow are inextricably linked. Workflow is only as effective as its ability to provide all supporting information at each step.
While traditional workflow systems got their start in the document arena—for example, routing scanned invoices for accounts payable—content today is a lot more than just scans of printed information. It is a digital asset that is created in many different formats—printer output formats, image files, HTML/Web pages, audio, video, animation, desktop files, transaction data and more. Any of this content may be required to support your business processes.
Contemporary workflow engines must be tightly linked to a robust content repository that stores and integrates all the enterprise content that supports your business processes. You must be able to link stored content to a task or a user at any point in the workflow and a document’s “arrival” in the repository must be able to initiate or be added to a workflow process.
As an example, Mobius’s Web-based WorkflowDirect™ product is fully integrated with the Mobius ViewDirect® TCM Content Repository, the foundation of a total content management solution that integrates content and process to support e-business and internal operations.
In summary, the new generation of workflow systems addresses the issues that have until now kept workflow systems in the back office. The new workflow:
- supports collaboration not just throughout the organization but within your entire trading community;;
- is tightly coupled with a content repository that integrates content in any format from any source and makes it available at every step of the workflow; and;
- eliminates the costs and complexities of desktop software, with all user interactions via the browser. Implementation is quick and return on investment is immediate.;
Today’s workflow systems deliver flexibility, cost-efficiency and collaboration across the enterprise and beyond.
Mobius Management Systems, Inc is a leading provider of integrated solutions for total content management. The market-leading ViewDirect® TCM Content Repository serves as the foundation for a software suite that meets a broad range of e-business requirements, including back-office/front-office integration, Internet presentment and payment, customer care, and imaging and workflow. Mobius products are used by nearly 1,300 organizations worldwide including more than sixty percent of the Fortune 100