RCO — Workflow

Traditionally, business processes have been conducted via paper handling, status meetings and phone-tag. This detracts from doing real work, makes status tracking cumbersome, reduces accountability, and drives up costs.

Business Process Automation

(BPA) software reduces the time spent on information transfer by integrating an organization's people, information, technology and tasks into fluid streams of work. Acting as a centralized storehouse, BPA software manages, automates and tracks the flow of work and information throughout a given process.

Enterprises can save significant time and money because BPA software eliminates the need to code business logic into applications. A recent Giga Information Group* report estimates that, "the potential for workflow software to reduce time spent on custom development by 50 percent-150 percent will significantly broaden the number of organizations implementing workflow during the next two to three years." Managers can quickly and easily check the status of work in progress, re-route tasks, view performance metrics, and alter processes to reflect changing internal and external conditions - all in real-time.

BPA technology has its roots in the history of document-centric workflow products, initially developed in the insurance and healthcare industries during the mid-80s to supplant tedious paper-based transactions. During the late 90s, companies identified the potential of Web-based workflow technology for intra- and inter-enterprise business, and entered the market with products that extended business process automation beyond internal organizational boundaries.

Today many organizations continue to face significant information system fragmentation.

This fragmentation makes the enterprise-wide BPA approach essential to an organization's overall IT infrastructure. The increasing need for companies to develop and manage complex, cross-enterprise business processes to support an expanding range of transactions also is driving this demand. Information is power. BPA technology plays a critical role in supporting and promoting efficient collaboration across systems, groups and enterprises.

A survey of IT and business managers in 300 US and European companies found the following:

> On an average, business information resides in seven different systems that, generally speaking, are not integrated.

> 75% of respondents said lack of integration causes problems with consistency and compatibility of data, as well as extraction and collation of data.

> The overwhelming majority of respondents felt the lack of integration caused significant problems in supporting processes that go beyond corporate boundaries.

*Moore, Connie, Planning Assumption, "Workflow Goes Mainstream," Giga Information Group, April 21, 2000.