Jun 24, 2008
Workflow Tools Provide the Grey Matter to Reduce the Grey Area
Formerly, document development software applications have presented the user with all the available tools and options. This provided a rich and useful environment for developers but included too many features for others who may have needed to work only with some ancillary areas in the workflow. In order to maintain productivity across all users it was necessary for each to work in their own business application, creating a grey area between the disparate systems.
How to organize, manage, and control the various elements that would eventually come together in the final formatted document?
Take the example of the legal team writing and editing text that ultimately needed to be a part of the document. Once the text leaves the hands of the legal group, management and versioning became a manual process which opened up the door for errors. Combine this with the reality that many documents require multiple versions of the same information and the potential for error climbs. Today the web is helping to solve this problem in a number of ways.
Browser-based tools are helping organizations de-compartmentalize solutions and extend specific features appropriately across the enterprise or to outside partners, vendors, customers, and others.
Modern applications that use a web client can present only options relevant at the moment or circumstance. At its most sophisticated an individual user can essentially have an interface created on demand by using a combination of their individual user rights along with the specific requirements of the project or document. In this manner, even individuals in the same legal department may each have different access rights to a particular document’s contents.
In another example, web-based workflows can simply tie in the various individual applications from a managerial perspective. Individual users — as they work in unique applications — can have their activities tracked and recorded allowing the system to automatically distribute new tasks as others are completed. The web can provide a single unifying interface to distribute tasks and activities while allowing individuals to work in their preferred application.
In all the examples the web is helping to put the right tools in the hands of the various stakeholders across the enterprise.
Grey matters!
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visit www.elixir.com