Two important classes of information systems, Workflow Management Systems (Workflow tools s) and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, have been used to support e- business process redesign, integration, and management. While both technologies can help with business process automation, data transfer, and information sharing, the technological approach and features of solutions provided by Workflow tools and ERP are different. Currently, there is a lack of understanding of these two classes of information systems in the industry and academia, thus hindering their effective applications. In this paper, we present a comprehensive comparison between these two classes of systems. We discuss how the two types of systems can be used independently or together to develop intra- and inter-organizational application solutions. In particular, we also explore the roles of workflow tools and ERP in the next generation of IT architecture based on web services. Our findings should help businesses make better decisions in the adoption of both Workflow tools and ERP in their e-business strategies.
What is an ERP workflow?
An effective ERP solution helps you streamline tedious tasks, gives real-time visibility into the inner workings of the business processes, and in turn makes your employees more productive and efficient in their roles.
But most ERP solutions do not come with a native way to handle approval workflows inside the product, so you must create one outside the system.
An ERP workflow is a logical blueprint that describes how ERP applications manage business processes.
An ERP workflow:
Provides real-time visibility of operations
Gives business leaders a quick view of their global supply chain
Helps identify challenges and opportunities, enabling you to make faster business decisions
Streamlines and integrates tasks in the organization
Allows access to company data from anywhere
Makes collaboration easier
Offers real-time analytics and reporting
Today’s enterprise infrastructure and organization require the support of critical business processes. Since business processes are the fundamental building blocks of an organization’s success, information technologies that focus on process management and improvement have been good candidates to help organizations to fulfill their corporate visions and to improve their competitive positions. In the past two decades, special interest has been given to two distinct solutions that improve business processes: Workflow Management and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems.
Flexible Customizable, workflow Management System,
Workflow Model, Parameter based (embedded workflow model), ERP System, Application.
Establishing a Workflow
Workflows are easily established by a subject matter expert user. This user understands the tasks required to execute the process, the individuals required to approve the work item, the alternate approvers in instances when the primary approver is not available, and the time that should be allotted to perform the task, in this instance, the approval.
Workflow Components
The core elements of any workflow are events, triggers, a routing and notifications.
Events
An event is the occurrence of a specific situation or condition that affects the workflow in one of the following ways:
Initiates or terminates a workflow process instance or instances
Changes the state of a workflow instance, e.g., from not approved to approved
Provides notifications, e.g., to the approver, by way of email or alerts
Enables a particular activity to be started, restarted or completed
Triggers
An event usually has a trigger, also known as a cause that initiates a particular action to be taken or response to be made. Define and Manage Triggers:
Notifications
Workflow notifications can be created to:Automatically notify individuals of tasks that they must perform, e.g., approve the purchase order, Automatically notify the initiator, the approval
Support time-based notification, Record when system messages are sent
From a basic task routing to complex features with policies, rules, escalations and exception handling the ERP workflow management software provides an easy to use workflow engine to automate your business process
Many out of the box business process workflows such as purchasing approval, master data creation etc. are provided as part of the workflow management solution
Allows users to redirect or delegate tasks to other users and respond to tasks using emails, Product, Manufacturing, Financial, Customer, Supplier, Projects, Service, Supply Chain, Connectivity, Business Intelligence, Tools & Technologies and Chart Icon
If your organization is already gearing to move towards digital transformation, then automation should as much be part of it as enterprise resource planning, ERP Workflow System , you are not just able to save the time of your team, but also standardize operations, create transparency, and follow necessary compliances.
How to automate ERP workflow While ERP workflow in itself is a powerful tool which can effortlessly streamline business processes, it still cannot help automate manual tasks that might be part of the processes. That is precisely why you need a workflow automation tool to work alongside your ERP tool. With business process management and automation tools, it becomes possible to automate approval processes–which an ERP tool cannot. You can automate ERP workflows
The ERP process steps for creating a successful workflow
Reason for ERP implementation
Scope Evaluate
Migrate Data
Add stakeholders
Process owner
Diagram Design
Workflow Create
Connections Build
Workflow Test
Go live
Reason for ERP implementation
The first step of the process is to identify why you want to incorporate ERP as part of your organization’s digital transformation initiative. If you wish to achieve greater work efficiency or higher data security, you need to analyze your main goals from the ERP perspective.
This will not only help you pick the right ERP tool, but it will also manage business processes more efficiently and improve overall productivity.
Scope Evaluate
The features of the ERP tool that you require should be evaluated as well, especially if you are looking to have more control over business processes and create transparency in daily operations. Without an unclear definition of the ERP scope, you will be left with an ERP workflow process that does not add any value to your business and becomes an extra burden on your finances.
Migrate Data
With the ERP tool picked out, it’s time to create an ERP workflow that connects all the applications and processes in your organization. To migrate your data to a new ERP tool, you need to first identify the data that has to be transferred and find a process to make the transfer securely.
Add stakeholders
Add relevant people to the different parts of the ERP workflow. Each user can have customized permissions to the workflow, depending on the responsibilities they have. The users can also be allowed to submit data, view data, or approve/reject data.
Process owner
You should identify the parts of the ERP workflow that are repetitive manual tasks and can be automated. Also, Identify the person or group of people in your organization that have the authority to make changes to the existing ERP workflows so that you can give them relevant permissions when the workflow is created
Diagram Design
Based on how the workflow was previously managed and the parts of the ERP workflow process that you want to automate, map out a rough workflow diagram. You should focus on keeping the workflow as minimal as possible. While you can always add more tasks to the workflow later, a shorter workflow usually has a higher success rate.
Workflow Create
Enter all the relevant information of the ERP and gather data from the manual process. The best way to analyze the effectiveness of the automation is by comparing the automated process with the manual process that was previously being followed.
Connections Build
You’ll need to make sure has connected to your ERP system automatically. Many cloud-based ERP systems can be connected with . Other systems can take advantage of the APIs built into to make sure data transfers happen automatically.
Workflow Test
Check all custom fields, sequence numbers, parallel branches, and conditional paths of your workflow to ensure its working correctly. It is best to run it a few times with different conditions to make sure the correct paths are being followed.
Go live
With the workflow accurately created, the final step is to go live and improve the overall productivity of your company
ERP systems are implemented around the idea of prefabricated applications as shown in. To achieve better “fit” between the prefabricated applications and the needs of the organization, ERP systems must be configured by setting various application parameters. The more parameters an ERP application has, the more flexibility in configuring the business process. However, the workflow model in conventional ERP systems is not explicitly specified because it is embedded in the applications and the parameter tables.
represents one of the key differences between Workflow tools and ERP systems. One way to better understand these differences is to distinguish between flow logic and function logic. Function logic deals with a specific task, such as updating a customer record or calculating order discounts, while flow logic deals with combining many functions in some sequence to solve more complex problems such as processing an order. In ERP systems, flow logic and function logic are both embedded in applications and parameter tables. In contrast, a Workflow tools separates the two explicitly. Flow logic is captured in a workflow model, usually graphically represented.
Summary Results
Workflow Designer:
Workflow Designer is a graphical editor with which you can model and configure your workflows. This tool is intuitive to operate and provides common process mapping symbols in its toolbar, which can be applied quickly and easily using drag and drop. With procedures, tasks, dependencies, priorities, deadlines and responsibilities defined and documented, you can establish a crossdepartment overview of processes and structures that is both uniform and binding.
The created workflows remain flexible and authorized users, such as the process owner, can adjust them to changing requirements at any time. If the workflow has been rolled out and the condition for the process start has been met, the process engine will trigger the individually modeled processes for the assigned persons, groups, or system services in accordance with the defined sequence. Authorized users (Process Administrators) can manually influence the process flow if necessary.
Workflow Viewer:
In the Workflow Viewer, you can identify where a process is currently at with a single look: Based on the procedure defined in abas BPM Designer both completed and active process steps are marked, and the step that is currently being processed is highlighted. Authorized users (Process Administrators) can manually influence the process flow if necessary.
Workflows integrated in the ERP system:
With abas BPM, which is fully integrated in abas ERP, you can design new processes and workflows. This is done with the help of a user-friendly, graphical editor. Users can then efficiently perform their tasks using dashboards. Authorized users (Process Administrators) can manually influence the process flow if necessary.
Workflow Task Overview:
The Workflow Task Overview provides each process participant a manageable overview that bundles information relevant for the individual user and prompts the user to complete pending work packages. The Dashboard displays outstanding tasks for the specific user and offers them the option to start processing these tasks directly from the overview, after which, for example, the appropriate abas ERP screen will open automatically. In addition, a performance diagram displays the proportional distribution of tasks completed on time or too late by each user. Authorized users (Process Administrators) can manually influence the process flow if necessary.
ERP systems have developed industry best-practice solutions for most major industries, such as aerospace and defense, automotive, consumer products, chemicals, engineering and construction, retail, and health care. Implementing these ERP systems requires the setting of thousands of parameters in order to customize applications to individual organizational contexts..
ERP systems constitute applications that focus on the integration of data. The objective of ERP applications is to provide an integrated solution to all business areas (financial, sales, human resource, etc.).
The underpinning of shared data structures across many applications eliminates the need to pass data step-by-step among applications by accessing data from a common structure. The focus of ERP systems is mainly on structured data transactions, i.e., Type systems. ERP modules operate directly with common interoperable databases to ensure consistent information for all purposes. This makes the manipulation of data easy. The ERP concept makes the strong assumption that data infrastructures are homogeneous across the organization, that is, the data is stored in interoperable databases, and in some cases, the databases used are all from the same vendor. Some ERP systems (for example, Oracle ) only support specific database management systems. Other ERP systems are more versatile, supporting the most well-known database platforms. Such a strong assumption forces organizations to migrate from existing systems to a standardized data environment. During implementation, only data integration from interoperable databases needs to be considered. ERP systems are data-centric, and thus they are well suited for modeling transactional processes for which only data integration is needed as in the case of the first example above. Workflow tools s can address all three types of workflows outlined above, however, they are most suitable for modeling workflows involving humans and software systems , especially if the systems are autonomous and heterogeneous. On the other side, ERP systems are more appropriate to model transactional workflows, which are data oriented. Nevertheless, when transactional workflows involve heterogeneous systems, a more appropriate solution may be the adoption of a Workflow tools . For small organizations with heterogeneous infrastructures, the adoption of a Workflow tools to integrate their systems may be a more adequate solution, since it does not require the time and monetary investments associated with ERP implementations. .