Features and Benefits Online Access to Process Information

Transforming your process into one that is online means real-time operation, 24x7 capability and remote access, all without stalling while participants coordinate their interaction. This delivers potentially huge business benefits.

A participant in a process knows exactly what the status of any particular job is. In the specific case of a process which has a customer facing element this translates into better service for your customers.

Online workflow increases the speed of your processing. So for example, when a job reaches a particular stage of a process the system can be designed so as to alert all the possible members of staff who might be able to perform the relevant function. In a non-automated world this can be a time consuming exercise. In an automated world the job is passed on through the process in highly repeated manner. Both of these factors serve to increase the rate at which jobs are completed.

You also gain the ability to operate your business round the clock since any participant can have access to the information required to perform her role within a process at any time of the day or night.

This confidence in an ability to provide good service to customers can act as an important motivator to staff. In particular they will have received tangible and functioning tools to help them serve customers better and to free up their time to perform higher value added tasks. This serves to improve staff morale and hence productivity.

For a manager, the fact that your workflow is online means that she can more quickly deal with exceptions to a process, since a solution can provide for such exceptions to be escalated to her automatically. Again this enhances the reliability of your operation.

Finally, in the same way that you can make more efficient the interactions with your customers, you can do likewise with your suppliers. This could be by explicitly making them part of your process, or alternatively be simply by automating processes relating to your procurement activities.