11 Best Workflow Software for Business Process Management

Drag and drop workflow template design

As the interface via which team members interact with your workflow, process workflow templates inevitably comprise an essential component within it. This is why your templates need to be visually attractive and user-friendly. Otherwise, they could cause unnecessary confusion and inefficiencies.

Drag and drop templates, therefore, are an absolute must-have. Over-complicated layouts (i.e., tabular, multi-page, multi-column, confusing conditional formatting, hidden text, too many options to configure and so on) can be seriously counter-productive. Your workflow templates need to look good and be easy for people to use. This is a primary requirement.

Obviously, they’ll need features like decisions, loops, dependent dates, assigned to, attachments and data capture request options.

Built-in mobility

Workflow management systems, like just about any other technological tool, support mobile functionality. However, when choosing a workflow automation tool, you must ensure that it works just as well on mobile as it does on other devices.

So, it should require no coding on your part before the layout looks good on mobile—this should be a given. Its mobile design should be intuitive, with automatic pagination and bigger buttons, for example. Nor should you have to switch between devices because certain functions are only accessible on a desktop. 

Reporting

When you’re looking for workflow software, reporting needs to be a key consideration. Firstly, you need a solution that offers simplicity and straightforwardness in reporting. You need to be able to see instantly where things are, who’s got the ball, when specific tasks are due, and what’s overdue.

You need to be able to see what decisions have been made, and to have a clear overview of how successful your workflow is when looked at over a given period (in other words, quality). As well as how often workflow is used and resourcing levels. When looked at together, this will help you understand who’s taking on the most activity and where any blockages might be.

Improvement and collaboration

Your workflow software needs to enhance team performance and, crucially, collaboration among colleagues. It should allow you to communicate with your team in the same system in which the work is going on.

This way, everyone knows what’s going on in the same central place, rather than trying to decipher what’s happening in someone’s head, make sense of an email trail, or look for what’s been jotted down on a scrap piece of paper.

Likewise, the ability to call out or highlight colleagues through an appropriate mechanism can make a big difference to collaboration and overall performance standards. You must therefore ensure that your workflow software alerts them via email whenever a task needs their attention.

Integration

Integration is one of the most popular buzzwords in business today, and rightly so. But it is absolutely imperative when it comes to workflow automation; if your processes can pull data from web services, SQL databases, and other back-end systems, they’re going to be much more helpful to your business.

For example, take something as simple as vacation requests. If your system can access PTO (Paid Time Off) data from your HR system, processing these requests is far more straightforward and more transparent. Likewise, the expense approval process is considerably easier if your system can integrate with databases and accounting systems.

If you have a development team or technical resources available to code the information, then it’s likely you’re looking for systems that have a public API available. If not, or you’d simply like to get integration and automation up and running quicker, you should be looking for systems that support Zapier, Integrately, or Integromat.

These no-code middleware integration platforms may look complex to start with, but they’re incredibly easy once you get the hang of using them, and allow you to save a huge amount of time and reduce errors by implementing. Most major software platforms including Google Suite, Office 365, Salesforce, and others are supported in this way.

Notifications and reminders

Team members must be adequately notified whenever a workflow step is assigned to them. Workflow automation software generally allows for customization of these notifications and then sends them out automatically at the right time, generally via email.

At the same time, however, it’s vital to remember that employees typically receive a flood of emails. Your emails must be succinct and contain all the relevant information to save time and effort. With dynamic fields from the workflow in your emails, you should be able to use form data to construct any part of the message.

Of course, there will be times when employees procrastinate about taking action. Your workflow management system should have the capacity to respond to this by sending reminder notifications automatically, thus sparing line managers the need to intervene personally.