Running a small-to-medium business (SMB) in today’s economy isn’t easy. You need to maximise efficiency to maintain your competitive advantage. One area where you can easily lose that efficiency is workflow approval. Without a good workflow approval process, your business experiences bottlenecks and delays that cost you time, money, and opportunities.
Keep reading to learn why you’d benefit from an efficient workflow approval process and how to build one.
The Importance of Implementing an Efficient Workflow Approval Process
Your SMB needs an efficient workflow approval process because it’s the foundation of a successful business operation. Here’s why it’s important:
1. Ensuring Data Security
You need an efficient workflow approval process to ensure only authorised personnel access sensitive data, like customer information or financial records. If unauthorised individuals access this data, they can use it for malicious purposes, like blackmail.
Without proper data security, you’re also likely violating many data regulations, which will cost you legal and reputational damage.
2. Enhancing Operational Efficiency
A good workflow approval process will reduce bottlenecks and delays caused by decision-making. With a streamlined process, all decisions will be made promptly, ensuring team members can focus on their tasks and improve productivity.
With an efficient workflow process, your employees won’t become disengaged by having to unnecessarily wait for approval to start work.
3. Compliance with Regulations
You must comply with multiple data protection regulations, like the Privacy Act 1988 and the Australian Privacy Principles (APPs). With a defined approval process, you’ll better adhere to these regulations because you’ll minimise the chances of these regulations being ignored.
If you violate these regulations, your business will experience financial, reputational, and legal consequences.
4. Improving Accountability and Transparency
A good workflow approval process provides a transparent trail of decisions and resulting actions. You’ll experience improved auditing thanks to this transparency and an increased ability to identify issues.
You’ll also build a better culture of accountability by clearly tracing actions to individual employees.
This increased accountability will improve your efficiency and give employees greater confidence in management’s fairness.
5. Facilitating Better Decision-Making
With a clear workflow approval process, your decision-makers will have better access to information to make informed decisions. This improved speed is especially important for industries where delays can mean missed opportunities.
By standardising the workflow process, decision-makers will make quick, efficient decisions with minimal delays.
6. Reducing Errors and Redundancies
A formal approval process reduces the chances of human error. By creating a standardised workflow, your business will have consistent and accurate operations with reduced work.
Reducing errors means everything from increased productivity to fewer mistakes that cause financial loss for your business.
7. Enhancing Collaboration and Communication
You’ll improve communication and collaboration among your team with a better approval process. By setting clear instructions and defined stages, your employees will better understand their roles. That way, they’ll work more effectively together.
The benefit of improved collaboration is that your business will become more productive. The increased productivity will translate to better finances.
8. Supporting Scalability
Your operations become more complex the more your business grows. Combat unnecessary complexity by having a scalable approval process.
With an efficient approval process, your business can focus on more important areas when it grows.
The Story of BayView Consulting
Bayview Consulting is an Australian marketing firm with over 70 employees. Their daily business operations include handling multiple client contracts, completing financial reports, and writing sensitive strategic marketing documents.
Recently, they suffered a data breach scare. That forced them to create a more efficient workflow approval process to avoid potential data breaches. Their experience illustrates how other SMBs can do the same.
BayView Consulting’s major goal was to prevent mishandling of sensitive data. They were afraid of the financial, reputational, and legal consequences of such breaches. So they were driven by urgency.
Here’s how they successfully built their new workflow approval process.
Key Factors to Consider
1. Data Sensitivity and Classification
BayView’s first step was to understand their data sensitivity. Not all data needs the same level of protection. Your financial documents are more important than your vacation calendar.
BayView approached this by classifying their data into one of three types:
- Public: This is data that can be shared without risk. Marketing material, for example.
- Internal: This data is only for use by the organisation’s members. For example, internal memos and employee guidelines.
- Confidential: This data is only meant to be seen by approved personnel. It includes client information and financial data.
By classifying their data this way, BayView ensured each piece of data received appropriate protection without delaying their work process. They struck a balance between efficiency and security.
2. Access Controls and Permissions
BayView created role-based access controls to assign permission to different documents. The permissions an employee would have depended on their job. So, only relevant job titles received access to confidential data.
This approach streamlined approvals and reduced unauthorised access by pre-defining who had access to what information.
For example, financial officers could access financial reports, and project managers could approve client contracts.
With this approach, financial officers wouldn’t need permission to access financial reports, and project managers wouldn’t require approval to work on client contracts. Nor could financial officers interfere with client contracts or project managers access confidential financial reports.
BayView also implemented the least privilege principle, which states that employees should only receive the minimum access needed to perform their jobs. This further reduces the chances of data breaches.
3. Automation and Integration
BayView integrated their approval process with their project management software to automate repetitive tasks. Doing so saved time and improved productivity.
A McKinsey study found that automation increases productivity by up to 20% in some processes.
Here’s how BayView did it:
- Automated notifications: Every time a team member needs approval, the system will inform the relevant personnel.
- Seamless integration: Integrating the workflow approval process with existing software minimised potential disruptions.
This strategy sped up BayView’s approval process and reduced the chance of human error.
4. Audit Trails and Compliance
BayView created an audit trail system that recorded every approval. This way, they’d have clear records for internal audits.
The benefit of this system is improved accountability and regulatory compliance. With a clear audit trail, BayView could transparently trace every decision back to whoever made it and hold them accountable.
This system also makes it possible to improve regulatory compliance because they now have better data access control.
5. Employee Training and Awareness
BayView recognised that technology wasn’t enough. They also had to train their employees to make the new system work. So, they invested in training sessions to onboard employees.
This training included how to use the new tools and taught employees why they were important. BayView educated their employees through awareness campaigns on the importance of efficient workflows and data security.
Doing so ensured employees understood why they needed to learn these new tools and valued them.
Implementation Challenges
These are the 5 main challenges that Bayview experienced.
1. Initial Resistance to Change
Many BayView employees were too used to the old and less structured system used by the company. They convinced these employees to switch over by communicating the benefits of the new system.
They also involved employees during the new system’s implementation process to win over their trust.
Thanks to this approach of addressing resistance head on, BayView smoothly transitioned their employees to the new workflow process.
2. Integration with Existing Systems
BayView faced technical difficulties integrating its project management software with its new workflow system. To solve these problems, its management worked closely with its IT Managed Service Provider (MSP).
Their MSP’s technical expertise proved decisive in overcoming these problems and successfully integrated their old project management software with the new process.
3. Maintaining Flexibility
BayView understood their structured workflow would still need some flexibility to be effective. So, they accounted for exceptions in their approval process for urgent or unusual circumstances. That way, their system wouldn’t become a bottleneck during a potential situation.
Integrating flexibility into their system means BayView’s new process could handle special cases without hurting the company’s efficiency.
4. Ongoing Maintenance and Support
Creating a new workflow system isn’t a one-time event, as Bayview realised. They ensured their system received ongoing technical support and regular updates. They also recognised they would need to address new issues with the system as they appeared.
By committing to maintaining and improving its system, BayView ensured it could improve its workflow approval system over time.
Build your new workflow approval process today!
You need an efficient workflow approval process to keep your business operations smooth and protect sensitive data. Without a clearly defined process, your business likely experiences unnecessary bottlenecks and potential security vulnerabilities.
Of course, building a new workflow approval process isn’t easy. So, like Bayview, you may want some professional help. Click here to contact PowerbITs for a free consultation to learn how to set up your new system today.
