Note 017Business Systems1 min read
Approval workflows: getting paper off the desk
How requests, approvals and sign-offs that move on paper or by email become a workflow that shows where every request is.
Leave requests, purchase orders, expense claims, document sign-offs: every business has requests that need someone's approval. On paper or by email they get lost, wait on someone's desk, and leave no record of who approved what.
What a workflow does
A workflow turns each request into a record that moves through defined steps. The person who makes a request fills in one form. The right approver is told, approves or declines, and the next step starts by itself. At any moment, anyone involved can see where the request is.
What changes
- Nothing waits unseen on a desk: every request has an owner and a status
- Every decision is recorded, with who made it and when
- The same rules are applied every time
- Reports on requests come from the system, not from memory
Designing one
Start with one request that happens often and causes friction. Write down who asks, who approves, what information is needed and what happens after the approval. Those steps become the workflow, and the same pattern then serves the next kind of request.
Part of a larger system
Workflows are rarely on their own for long. They sit best inside a management system that also holds the people, the stock or the orders the requests are about, with a dashboard that shows what is waiting.
Follow the studio
The work in these notes, as it is made: pieces off the printers, systems going live.
