What is Workflow?? Building a complete Workflow helps businesses reduce a lot of costs and time to complete work items. Work control becomes simpler and more orderly. So how to apply and build effective workflow processes in the business? Find out with OOS through the article below.

What is Workflow?

Workflow Derived from two English words, “work” means work, and “flow” means flow. When combining the two words, it will literally mean work flow, and figuratively mean workflow. It means tasks that need to be completed in a certain standardized order. Workflow has the role of helping people grasp their work to be done and complete the task well.

Setting up a workflow helps the work to be completed in a systematic way, following the previous process. In addition, it helps to increase work efficiency, avoid errors, and save time and labor.

Some examples of workflows are as follows:

The system that automatically emails invoices to customers, partners, etc. is one of the sales processes with a pre-set workflow. It saves time, minimizes errors and confusion in the stages.

In the telesale system, having a workflow set up will help work flexibly and be handled more efficiently. If the customer's situation cannot be resolved by the staff, the handover email will be automatically sent to the relevant departments for resolution. It saves human effort, quickly and creates credibility with customers.

Find out more: What is Workflow? 

5 Benefits of using Workflow for businesses

After finding out What is Workflow?Let's see why Workflow is important for businesses. Some of the benefits include the following:

Set up intuitive business workflows

Workflow provides the most logical and objective systematic working process for businesses. Each specified work item is arranged and shown most clearly. This helps businesses minimize errors and confusion in case the amount of work is too much.

In addition, the workflow is outlined in the form of a diagram to make it easier for employees to remember their tasks and roles. Since then, the speed and efficiency of work is also increased.

Eliminate redundant tasks and activities

As the workload increases, the tasks will also increase and inevitably redundancy or confusion. The work order is systematic and simplified, based on which businesses can detect and eliminate unnecessary jobs. In addition, thanks to workflow, businesses can observe the workflow objectively and specifically. From there, we can detect the gaps in the process and have a plan to fix it in a timely manner, without delaying the work progress.

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Raise the sense of responsibility for employees

Businesses set up workflows to help employees clearly understand their roles and work to be done. Thereby improving the sense of self-discipline, responsibility and promoting employee performance to complete the assigned work on schedule.

Create work order

Workflow is designed to help employees understand the work process and how to solve problems in a systematic way. Workflow helps employees answer some questions like

• How to start a job?
• How does that work?
• What goals need to be mastered and achieved?
• Minimizing errors in work

Reduce operating costs

Applying workflow to work helps businesses choose the most appropriate and optimal working plan. Simplify the sequence and speed up the completion of work. Thereby saving operating costs and increasing profits for businesses.

When do you need a Workflow app?

Understanding the concept and benefits of Workflow, when should businesses implement workflows at work? Some of the following factors will help you consider when to apply.

• Apply Workflow in multi-process, high-complexity projects.
• The work requires coordination from many departments, departments and team members, requires cooperation ability and high teamwork capacity.
• Enterprises have many departments, requiring close coordination of work processes.
• Enterprises want to improve the working process to save more time and human effort.

5 Effective Workflow Improvement Theory

To bring business performance to life, the statistical methods of W. Edwards Deming and Joseph M. Juran helped form 5 theories of effective work process improvement. As follows.

• Six Sigma: This theory refers to the elimination of errors, confusion in the product at the end process. To apply Six Sigma well, it is required that human resources have high observational and analytical skills. Six Sigma consists of two popular ways, DMADV and DMAIC.
• Quality management: This theory helps to improve and enhance the quality of products and control well the working environment, the interactions between employees.
• Business restructuring: This theory is intended to provide algorithms for leaders to easily analyze levels of diversity.
• Lean Systems: This theory helps to reduce redundant costs, create a simple process, increase competitiveness and adapt quickly to market changes.
• Theory of Constraints (TOC): The method will help businesses identify weak links to consider and remove from the workflow.

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7 Steps to build a workflow

Identify data source

The first step to building a workflow is to understand how the work model works. Clearly define the individual's task and who moderates it. You can sketch on paper, or on computer-aided software.

All the data collected will make up the work order and limit the participants. In addition, you should discuss with the participants to learn more about the difficulties they will face if implementing the workflow.

List of tasks

After collecting all the data, you will list the tasks to be completed in order. It is important that you define your goals and process structure in order to choose the right listing. If there are many complex work chains, they will be listed as a chart showing the relationship between tasks: parallel, serial, ...

Assignment

After you have clearly defined the task, you need to make a list of assignments for the right people. Depending on the nature, some tasks will need moderators to move to the next stage, and others will not. Therefore, you need to implement and assign clearly so that the participants understand their roles.

Create a workflow diagram

The next step is to design the process diagram. You need to choose a suitable, easy-to-understand diagram to help employees clearly visualize to successfully complete the corresponding task. In addition, effective process mapping will help you keep track and capture the progress of work.

There are many ways to make a diagram. You can draw the flowchart manually. If you are not proficient in hand drawing, you can refer to some other tools. Currently there are a number of diagramming software with many accompanying features to design the model according to the user's wishes.

Process check

After setting up the model, the next step is to test the operation. This is a very important step that requires the cooperation of the participants. It helps you to evaluate the model when it is operating in practice. You can organize a trial run with the personnel involved in the process. The evaluation process will take place objectively and with the input of everyone, helping to add important factors or remove redundant operations from the process.

New Workflow Implementation Guide

After making sure the process is working properly, you need to organize a full staff orientation session. Teach participants how to perform the process to help them use it more proficiently. In addition, you can share more about the workflow design process to help each person better understand the work and perform their tasks well.

Process implementation

This is the final step to finalizing the workflow setup. For more accurate results, you can start with a small team first. After testing for a certain period of time, you will know what needs to be improved to make the process better.

Hope the above article has answered the question What is Workflow? for readers. Building an effective workflow helps to increase the professionalism and system of the business and easier to control the quality of employees' work.

OOS Software has more than 15 years of research and development, is a reliable partner to support human resource management, accompanies many large enterprises and corporations in the market. Contact now to get advice on Recruitment Software for your Business.