In modern enterprise management and operation, standardized enterprise information system workflow has become its important core and soul. In order to replace the original paper application and approval, more and more enterprises and organizations have introduced approval workflow in company management and operation, in order to improve the operation efficiency of the company and standardize related management system.

Generally speaking, the contents of information workflow are basically the same, but the processing of internal logical data is different, which can be roughly divided into the following points:

one role

Each person has different responsibilities and levels in the organization or enterprise, and different tasks to be completed, so the corresponding permissions are also different. In the approval process, it can be roughly divided into two categories:

1. The originator

The initiator is the main stakeholder of a process and the person who cares most about the progress of approval. The initiator mainly completes transactional and operational work. From the perspective of the sponsor, after the creation of the approval item, it is necessary to improve the relevant information, urge the approver to deal with it in a timely manner, follow up and reject the modification opinion, and resubmit it.

2. The approver

The approver needs to complete the decision-making work in the process, so from the perspective of the approver, the content and operation should be simplified as much as possible: only the most important information should be displayed, so as to avoid too much information affecting the judgment, only necessary operations should be carried out without too many choices or operations, and the approval history should be kept for traceability.

2. Content: Extract the minimum set

Due to the different items of approval, the circulation content will be different. For the design of approval process, it is necessary to extract the most core content in the actual business, which can firstly reduce the work burden of sponsors and secondly improve the accuracy and efficiency of decision-making.

For example, a leave approval process, the core is leave time, cause and leave type; For the approval of a project approval vote, the voting results of the project approval meeting should be mainly displayed, and the meeting minutes should also be brought as an attachment, so that they can be viewed when necessary. In terms of interaction, attention should also be paid to the classification and storage of the content.

The key point of the design is to refine the content as much as possible, and pay attention to retain the necessary content. However, for the data that can be automatically obtained by the system, the initiator should avoid manually entering the common content of the preset, and replace the input with the way of selection, which can also improve the standardization of the content.

3. Process

1. Process of independent selection of approvers

This is a lightweight, flexible form of approval process for small businesses without standardized workflows. When the process sponsor initiates the examination and approval, it needs to automatically select the approver of the next link. After the approver of the next link passes the examination and approval, it can choose to continue the flow to the next person or end the process.

2. Serial processes

Only when the approver of each link passes the process, will it enter the next link. The rejection of each link may, according to the business needs, be designed as the rejection to the initiator, the rejection to the previous link, the re-examination and approval of the designated link, or both, as options for the approver to choose.

3. Parallel processes

In the parallel process, the approval process requires the approval of more than one person (role). There are two ways: one person who passes the approval will enter the next link & all people must pass the approval before entering the next link.

The first approach is easier to understand, while the latter is easily confused with serial processes, that is, multiple people are required to approve, but one is simultaneous and the other is time-sharing. The specific difference is whether the approver is at the same level. In fact, the parallel method is similar to the countersignature at the same level, while the serial method is suitable for the case of upper and lower level relationship.

The rejection of the parallel process is relatively simple. Generally, as long as one of the approvers rejects, the link is rejected.

4. Conditional trigger flow

Conditional triggering process is also common in the approval workflow, and the approval by a certain approval link (role) depends on the judgment of conditions. For example, if the amount is less than 10,000 yuan, it will be terminated upon approval by the Financial director, and if the amount is more than 10,000 yuan, it will be terminated upon approval by the vice President.

5. Mix processes

As the name implies, the mixed process is to mix the above processes, or take the above amount approval as an example. If the amount is less than 10,000 yuan, it will be finished after the financial approval. If the amount is between 10,000 yuan and 100,000 yuan, it shall be approved by the financial department first and then submitted to the vice president for approval, which will be completed immediately. If the amount is higher than 100,000 yuan, it shall be approved by the chairman and the president.

Four.

1. By

The Pass action is operated by the approver. Whether to enter the pass cause and whether to specify the pass cause depends on the actual service situation. The main points are: simple applications do not need to manually fill in the reason for approval, or provide common options, complex applications can choose to manually add details.

2. Reject the modification

The action of “rejection of modification” is operated by the approver, which is different from approval. In order to facilitate the modification and optimization of the sponsor, the reason for rejection generally needs to be set as a mandatory item. Otherwise, the sponsor or the participants in the previous examination and approval process will not be able to obtain the reasons for rejection and modification suggestions. Reject the modification based on service requirements, including the following three logic:

Rejection to the sponsor & rejection to the previous session & rejection to a prior approval session of the selection.

3. Resubmit

“Resubmit” is operated by the originator, and there is a one-to-one correspondence between rejecting changes. It should be noted that when the approver approves the resubmitted content, the reason for the previous rejection should be attached.

4. Cancel

The cancellation action is optional. Generally, the initiator cancels, not the approver, for the following reasons:

The approver only cares about whether the approval is approved or rejected. It is easy to confuse the meaning of cancellation and rejection, so attention should be paid to distinguish them. Of course, whether the initiator can cancel can be set by the configuration item.

5. Permissions

The control of permissions runs through all aspects of the approval process. The roles, contents, processes and actions mentioned above are all involved in the control of permissions. Permission system design is a big project, in the approval process, using role-based access control system (RBAC) is a good choice:

“Role based access control system, including user, role, goal and operation, permission to five basic data elements, each role has at least one permission, each user to at least play a role, can be completely different role assignment completely the same access rights, users and roles is a many-to-many relationship.”

The content of operation and permission can be divided into functional permission and data permission. Who can initiate what approval, functional permission controls the data visible to the corresponding role in the approval process, and data permission controls the link that the corresponding person/role can approve.

Configuration and extensibility

The configuration flexibility of the approval workflow is inversely proportional to the development complexity, and the specific degree of flexibility depends on business requirements. In general, the flexibility of developing back-end system for enterprises is relatively small, while the flexibility of commercialized system for multiple enterprises is high. Configuration flexibility is reflected in the following aspects:

The type of the approval process can modify the specific approval link, add the approval person/role of each link, and configure the permission related to the approval.

The efficiency of seven.

The core goal of workflow is to improve the operational efficiency of enterprises and organizations. If the online approval process is not as efficient as the original paper operation, then the design of the process is failed and meaningless. Therefore, after completing the design of the approval process, efforts should be made to review and optimize the efficiency of the process. To improve the efficiency of the examination and approval process, it is necessary to simplify the examination and approval operation as much as possible and guide the process operation well.

conclusion

The approval process is the basic application of the workflow in the background. The core point we grasp in the design process is to “improve efficiency and standardize management”. We should always look back in the design process so as not to deviate from this most important goal.

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