To keep your business running smoothly, you have to monitor and curate your  underlying processes. How do you accomplish this? Through workflow management or business process management (BPM).

This isn’t just about the general processes but also automating simple tasks, even in the areas of billing, sales analysis, financial close, order-to-cash, and others. Any logistics coordinator will tell you that streamlining one process while others languish in manual antiquity will create bottlenecks. To avoid delays and errors – and most of all, to help you achieve your goals faster and more easily – workflow management is best implemented from top to bottom. Everyone on the same page. Every process updated to the same standards.

BPM is the process of executing any specific business function within a company by marrying digital speed to human oversight. Through technology-enabled automation, an organization can integrate different office applications, restructure labor resources, and redefine the overall workflow steps to achieve the desired outcome.

Workflow management is not just about automation of common business processes – it enables your organization to simplify its core operational movements as well as improve the effectiveness of the system. In today’s hyper-competitive business environment, companies must utilize BPM to minimize operational costs, maximize productivity, improve client relations, and enhance their ROI.

Where does document management come into play?

With the availability of workflow management technologies and services, any paper problems encountered can be eliminated. Automated paperless solutions systems can also let a business identify redundant or unnecessary steps that do not help to wrap up the entire process quickly and efficiently.

What are the steps I need to take?

• Automate existing processes. Along the way, you will find out where the bottlenecks are located, which leads you directly to the problem.
• Evaluate existing processes. You can do this by analyzing how rules and regulations affect your entire process, which could help in determining a unique new solution to weak links.
• Find the best workflow management partner. Automating your business processes can only be successful if you implement a BPM solution that will cater to your specific needs and expectations. Make sure that your provider fully understands your business process and can customize their offering to fit your goals.

What’s in it for me?

Of course, you will save time and money which inherently gives you a competitive advantage over other businesses, but you don’t only save time and money. When you apply BPM in your document management, you gradually notice these benefits:

• Your staff has more time and energy to focus on more productive work.
• You will enjoy complete transparency into all your transactions and across your business.
• Human error is greatly reduced and potentially eliminated.
• Your business efficiency is dramatically improved, allowing for maximum growth.

Once you try workflows, you will never want to go back. Good luck in your business automation endeavor.