Real World Scenario

Your company processes bookings for river cruises. In the past you collected the customers information on a call sheet, from that call sheet you filled in another sheet which you passed on to the boat coordinator for allocation of an appropriate boat & crew on the requested date. You also fill out a catering form for the Kitchen who must organize for the catering and serving staff to be allocate to that boat. Another form with basically the same information must go to the accounts department so the customer is invoiced. When the date gets closer you must check that all the other departments have organized their resources so that the cruise will go ahead on time. You contact the customer to confirm the booking. You must also check with the accounts department to see the Invoice has been paid before the cruise can go ahead. etc…

The above is a typical example where many resources must be organised and a predefined set of steps must occur so that the final outcome is consistently achieved. With all the information on paper, and someone having to remember to check with each department head to see whether their department has completed the steps correctly and on time, there is a huge possibility for mistakes to be made & information to be lost.

With a workflow system we are able to design a system that will automatically track the steps of each process, allocate each person their task, and allow you to track & report on the progress at any given time. In the above example after the initial information was entered and the booking confirmed, automated tasks would appear in the Boat, Catering & Accounting departments queue's for processing. As each section completes their task they acknowledge this in the system. The system then automatically generates the next logical task that needs to be performed and puts it in the appropriate queue. The system will email or fax a booking confirmation automatically to the customer, and the Invoice is generated automatically when payment is received and confirmed.

The above workflow system allowed the company to process their cruises with efficiency eliminating mistakes and lost business, and even cutting down on the stress put on staff to ensure everything runs smoothly.

The net effect is a more profitable business with complete customer satisfaction.