Here at SuiteRep, we like workflows. Workflows automate necessary but repetitive tasks, freeing up the NetSuite user’s time and eliminating the potential for error. Is that all workflows can do, though?
The Comprehensive Workflow
Maybe you’ve always viewed workflows as random combinations of automations—disjointed parts of your company’s business processes. But what if workflows weren’t just parts of a business process? What if a single workflow was an entire business process? What would that even look like?
At SuiteRep, we like to create comprehensive workflows for our clients. A comprehensive workflow is simply a workflow that shows the entirety of a single business process. As a base, we start with letting the different stages of a business process—like the stages of procure-to-pay or order-to-cash—represent the different states of the workflow. Then, we fill in all the desired automations around those workflow states.
Benefits of a Comprehensive Workflow
But what does this process accomplish? What is the difference between a large collection of small workflows that perform isolated functions and a smaller collection of large workflows that manage entire business processes? At the end of the day, either set of workflows accomplishes the same results, right? Essentially, that’s true. But the comprehensive workflow provides three key benefits that are missing from a larger, haphazard collection of workflows. These benefits demonstrate both the functionality as well as the superiority of the comprehensive workflow.
Visibility
First, comprehensive workflows provide visibility. For example, a single workflow that targets the process a sales order goes through would inevitably give you better oversight for the entire process, keeping things from falling through the cracks.
In addition, this approach can be applied to the vast majority of transactions in your NetSuite instance, providing visibility on a wide scale. Because of the comprehensive workflow, you will be able to see the entire lifecycle of transactions like sales orders and purchase orders at a glance. Some companies may have different workflows built for every automation they need, but at the end of the day, that approach limits your visibility into all the different automations that make up any given business process.
Understanding
Second, the comprehensive workflow aids in your understanding of all your business processes. Workflows are a great way to document how, for example, your company wants to handle a sales order at any given stage. Being able to document the lifecycle of every transaction and record helps you to identify any weaknesses or inconsistencies in your standard operating procedures. For smaller businesses that are still discovering what works best for them, representing an entire business process with a single workflow may also help them to discover what their standard procedures should be in the first place.
As an added benefit, comprehensive workflows can be a learning tool, teaching new users how your company handles its business processes. When everyone in your company can understand the connections between the different stages of key business processes, they will be better equipped to make decisions that benefit the entire company.
Ease
And finally, this approach to workflows makes keeping up with workflows easier. For one thing, when you have a clear understanding of what the main stages are, then discovering where and when to add certain automations is simple. Comprehensive workflows also make tweaking your business processes much easier, since you don’t have to hunt through a large group of small workflows for the information you need to adjust.
Potential Concerns
Comprehensive workflows, however, are not without their problems. For one thing, building out a comprehensive workflow takes time. And building out a comprehensive workflow also takes thought. Without a good deal of time and some careful thinking, comprehensive workflows won’t benefit your company because they won’t deliver what they promise. Without time and thought, comprehensive workflows can’t be all that comprehensive.
But the benefits of these workflows far outweigh any problems. The time and thought you put in on the front end will inevitably save you hours of mind-numbing work later on.
A Comprehensive Workflow Case Study
Let’s take a quick look at a case study, just to get a more concrete idea of what we’re talking about.
Think about the stages of order fulfillment. Say you need two separate automations in the order fulfillment process: (1) you need to assign a packer when an Item Fulfillment (IF) record is created, and (2) you need to send a shipping confirmation to the customer when the IF record status is set to shipped. You could easily create two separate workflows for each of these automations.
A comprehensive workflow, however, would include both these automations in one two-state workflow. Having all the automations for your order fulfillment process in one workflow will allow you to see exactly what automations are occurring with that process, as well as when they occur. If at any point in the future you need to change an order fulfillment automation, you just need to edit your single, comprehensive order fulfillment workflow.
Now, imagine that you’re not using the comprehensive workflow, but you still need to edit one of the automations. You would need to track down the right workflow to start out with, and then you would need to check all the other related workflows to make sure that your changes to the initial workflow don’t affect how those workflows operate. If the business process represented by the collection of workflows just requires two automations (and, consequently, has only two corresponding workflows), then that’s not really a big deal. But what if the business process has five separate automations connected with it? Or ten? Before long, locating, editing, and even understanding what’s going on with all those workflows would be a major headache!
A Disclaimer
Before we dash away from this topic, let me drop a quick disclaimer. You may be suspicious that comprehensive workflows can’t possibly be sufficient to meet your company’s workflow needs. And you would be right. Sometimes, you do need to create simple, single-state workflows. For example, maybe you just need a workflow that sets a default field value. And that’s ok. As you use workflows, you will likely find other situations where a simple workflow would be best. The key thing is that you’re finding solid solutions that efficiently meet your needs—and often, comprehensive workflows are the way to do that.
Conclusion
Are you sold on the concept of comprehensive workflows yet? Hopefully, if nothing else, we’ve given you something to think about! If your business would benefit from having comprehensive workflows, but you don’t really know where to start, feel free to reach out to us here at SuiteRep. We love helping businesses like yours discover how comprehensive workflows can structure and streamline their business processes.
And who knows? Maybe there will be fewer NetSuite headaches in your future as a result.