WORKFLOW APP
Automate workflows from your mobile.
Cflow Mobile App. Automate. Just Like That.
A highly-productive business starts with managing workflows.
Handling all your business processes is not intricate when you use a workflow management app that has all the special features.
How Workflow Application Can Boost Your Productivity
The present-day modern society has become so complex that nobody can survey it entirely and figure out what their work plays a role in the scheme of things. This alienation is becoming a major problem. Many large companies struggle with the “big picture” getting lost in the high degree of work specialization. Employees always don’t realize why they have to do a specific task, which will negatively affect productivity.
This is why companies organize the works in such a way that their employees will clearly understand which customer they are working for and why the specific task is important. This is the result of an “organizational paradigm shift.” Companies set specific objectives as we shifted from a supply-driven economy into a demand-driven one.
This paradigm shift paved the way for the evolution of workflow management – to make work more controllable and to improve communication between employees. This workflow management controlled using workflow apps in the present-day modern digital world acts as a bridge between people’s work and computer applications.
In general, work can be in different forms – from making a bed to baking bread, designing a house, and collecting data for surveys. In all of these cases, there is one tangible thing in common – which we call with different names such as work, product, job, service, or item based on their nature.
A work is discrete in nature. Each work has a beginning and end, distinguished by a set of specific tasks. Every work involves a process that is performed. A process comprises a set of specific tasks which are carried out in certain pre-defined conditions and in order. These tasks are done logically using the resources to achieve the targeted end result. Some of the tasks in the process can also be iterated to arrive at synchronization and to achieve a particular objective.
These are the workflows that happen in an organization. Each workflow has a unique identity which is managed efficiently with the help of a workflow application. However, the success of the workflow app depends on the quality of the workflows put into it. This article is your go-to comprehensive guide to learning why having a workflow app is necessary for your business and how a workflow app like Cflow can skyrocket your productivity.
What is A Workflow App?
A workflow app allows users to create, execute and manage a network of coordinated activities. These activities include several people like reporting, approvals, payments, etc., which can be done electronically.
Workflow apps enable task automation. The workflow app results from the efforts of business process reengineering as teams analyze business activity and find ways to improve its efficiency. This efficiency is often achieved when a piece of technology eliminates paperwork, reduces some processing stages, and automates some processes.
How A Workflow Application Approaches A Workflow
As mentioned earlier, workflow apps have been created to automate work in many situations where they have been regulated with a stable pattern of work, and these works are voluminous. Since the internet has changed the nature of work, making almost everything electronic, the success and failure of having a workflow app depend on the organizational circumstances.
Moreover, the internal procedures in a company are implemented in several ways to accomplish maximum efficiency from their routine tasks. They can be manual or automated. In a manual approach, a task is formulated and documented in a procedural manual. Each worker will take responsibility for their respective tasks in preparing the document. They use standard office tools, emails, and web browsers to accomplish the final result. Often, manual workflows can be tedious and prone to human errors, which need additional validation.
In the modern-day competitive world, business processes are market-centered descriptions. They include implementing organizational activities, information, and material processes. Simply put, the business processes are engineered in a way to meet the customers’ needs by fulfilling a business contract.
The aim of workflow applications is to automate critical business processes to enhance efficiency and eliminate redundancies. With the abundance of available workflow applications in the market, they have taken some of these common approaches:
Message-Based
What Is Workflow Management?
Workflow management (WFM) can be characterized as a technology that supports business and information process reengineering. The main functions of workflow management include:
- Defining workflows, which has been a major function of WFM, relates to controlling and coordinating the execution of each task in a workflow. This requires individual skills and knowledge in handling information systems.
- When the business changes, it should provide immediate alternatives for (re) design and (re) implementation.
However, organizations also need to update their existing computer environment to support WFM as the systems get to evolve with time. They need to have a new component-oriented environment that will support integration and interoperability corresponding to the heterogeneity of the new systems. They need to ensure the reliability and correctness of the new systems to avoid redundancies and failure and ensure consistency in performance. Furthermore, they need to support evolution and replacement when new workflow applications are added in the future.
The workflow management application will set up a route through an electronic mechanism. This allows coordinating tasks between people within a department, business unit, or organization. When a person finishes a task, the workflow management application will analyze the business logic and notifies the next person in the chain. The new task will be automatically added to their list of tasks. For instance, when a lawyer completes the first draft of a new contract, the workflow management App will automatically notify the next senior person in the review process that a new contract needs to be reviewed.
Generally, a workflow management application is set up based on the organization’s email system. Making it email-enabled makes it easier to keep track of the project’s progress. This is done in three ways. First is by direct notification of new action to the concerned person through email, which has the direct link for the specific task that needs to be completed. The second is by sending reminders where when the employee ignores the first notification, then a reminder will be automatically sent and marked as “urgent.” The third is through automatic escalation of overdue tasks. This happens when the employee neglects the work completely, it will be automatically notified to the manager or process supervisor in charge, who will be notified through e-mail. From here, the manager or the process supervisor will handle the situation and ensures that the project gets completed on time.
Features To Expect From A Workflow Application
Since the workflow app that you choose will act as a background for your company’s productivity, it is essential to expect the following key features.
Easy deployment – Ensure your chosen workflow application is low-code/no-code software. The brilliance of any application can be seen in two qualities: the ease with which it is deployed and how quickly the automation is revised and adapted without the help of a developer. This no code/low code ability allows users to structure workflows and other processes the way they want.
Cloud-based – Cloud-based technology offers exceptional computational and storage capabilities on demand with its pay-as-you-go model. It has completely changed how we work, eliminating the need to be tied to the computer. Since files stored in the cloud can be accessed remotely, users can work from home, even via an app. Cloud-based workflow applications are more flexible and affordable.
Comprehensive features – When the workflow application has wholesome and precise features, you can easily automate the workflows. The level of flexibility of the workflow app will help you to create templates and processes from scratch easily and can automatically fit into a framework, notifying the corresponding people involved. This will significantly reduce errors and enhances collaboration and performance. Employees can better focus on value-added activities.
Customizations – The automatic email notifications and reminders will help prevent delays in completing tasks. Likewise, a flexible workflow app with immense customization options can be a powerful tool for your business. When you can customize the workflow app, you can create role-based access permissions giving control to those particular employees, stakeholders and clients involved. This increases security and strategically enhances the field of vision.
Integrations – This is another important feature to look for in a workflow app. Not even the best one could do in a single platform. However, a workflow app that supports integrations fills the gaps and strengthens your processes. A workflow app that is competent in integration can enhance your collaboration and minimize unnecessary disruptions.
Reports – This is the key feature to achieving consistency. You can also control the data and information that goes into workflows with up-to-date reporting and analytics. You can also sense potential dangers, which eliminates risks. Reports will help provide useful information on the prospects of the progress of the workflow. Analytics will help you forecast and predict your business’s future trends.
Scalability – To have even better control, some workflow apps like Cflow will provide you with conditional logic and rules. The no-code features allow users to build a structure that will predict scenarios. When the workflow app has conditional logic, they determine the processes that need approval and direct them to the respective people. Moreover, as the business grows, the workflows and processes become more complex, for which you will need a dynamic workflow app like Cflow to achieve consistent scalability.
Things To Consider Before Choosing A Workflow App
Here is a checklist to keep you handy when choosing a workflow app. But, choosing the correct one is not a simple task. Since there are several such apps out there, before settling for a workflow app, you need to consider a couple of things.
Well, you need to choose the best workflow app for your team by considering the hierarchy levels in your organization, the complexity of the business processes, the requirements of different departments and different teams, the type of data or information that they use, etc. The chosen workflow app should automate and streamline your business processes and improve the company’s efficiency.
- First, consider the size of your company. In general, medium and large-scale enterprises require workflow automation tools to simplify and manage their workflows.
- Since managing workflows will be done by both technical and non-technical employees in your organization, it is better to have code-free automation and a customizable dashboard designer.
- Creating custom workflows is necessary as each business is unique and works uniquely. The workflow app should be able to understand the business processes and provide a suitable solution.
- Automatic alerts for the approval process can be very helpful as the concerned parties will be notified timely, eliminating any lags.
- Integrate and streamline workflows to make sure the repeated processes are automated. Also, the critical workflows are integrated with the corresponding external applications as needed and work seamlessly.
- As mentioned before. Having cloud storage will facilitate easy sharing and access of documents with stakeholders with access permissions and version control. This will ensure the data is stored securely.
- Features like signature collection can speed up the process of legal documentation and is an added advantage.
- Cost-effectiveness should be considered and is an essential deciding factor. The workflow app should not be unreasonably expensive. If the app needs frequent queries and maintenance, you may need to rethink your choice. In addition to this, you need to consider the benefits and acquisition costs too to avoid unnecessary spending.
Unique Workflow App Use Cases
In most cases, workflow apps are used for procedures. For instance, onboarding where you need to hire new employees, find a new vendor for business, etc. however, there are some unique cases.
Distributed transactions – nowadays, transactions cannot rely only on the ACID (atomicity, consistency, isolation, and durability). So when you have a typical relational database, you will need additional requirements to scale down multiple transactions. Having a workflow app like Cflow will help you customize the workflows to remember the activities that are already executed and automatically invoke when the transaction fails. This compensation activity will help get the refund from the credit semantically. The app will help you to accept temporary inconsistencies and maintain eventual consistency without affecting the business flow.
Approvals – can be lengthy and even dull. When you sit in front of hundreds of emails and invoices, it can be pretty overwhelming. Even if you are using an email system, you need to send hundreds of emails. The to and fro communication might lose some important approvals, which can be easily overlooked. Instead, when you use the Cflow workflow application, you will have a centralized hub that controls all the approval processes. The automation enhances your clarity and automatically notifies the subsequent people in the approval chain. So you don’t need to worry about getting lost in the sea of emails.
Distributed system communication – is the new normal in the field of Information Technology. However, they are complicated due to fallacies in computing. For instance, there are some instances when some services might not be available to the customers. They will try to invocate the services by responding to them, which sometimes falls out of synchronization. Customers will have to wait for messages that can take several hours or even days; when the timeout happens, the customers may not be ready to accept the solution. Therefore, a workflow app will simplify the communication process and reduces fallacies.
Onboarding – this is one of the most common areas where workflow applications are used. Since employees are the assets of a company and are responsible for their success, it is important to choose the right people to keep the customers happy and satisfied with their work. Failure in onboarding can cause a severe financial loss to the company. So with a simple and sophisticated tool like Cflow, you can structure your onboarding process, customizing every step in the process, increasing employee retention by 25%.
Orchestration – since in modern architecture, decomposition has predominantly been a bigger issue. When your workflow app works in several small components, it will be easier to connect the dots and identify the activity, the people involved, the quality of the process, and determine if the process is happening sequentially.
Content development and marketing – this is one of the easiest and most straightforward fields where using a workflow app will enhance your SEO performance. When you have a structured process, everything becomes a single thing that will be easier to monitor.
Decision automation is another fast field where workflow apps are getting vast recognition. It will allow you to set up business rules to evaluate and approve processes automatically. You can also set up fraud detection and determine assignees before giving access permissions.
But in real life, often the use cases come as a combination. For instance, when you want to automate an application processing completely, which is a classical business process automation, you have to invoke several web services with the help of distributed system communication. Set up business rules that will automatically detect fraud and decide if it is a scammer. If there is a suspicion, the particular process will be routed to the concerned manager.
How A Workflow App Can Boost Your Productivity
Yes. The workflow apps exponentially increase your productivity. Organizations using workflow apps often account for every aspect of their operations within a centralized hub. All their communication and documentation will be siloed here.
The siloed data remains in the platform for as long as possible but needs to be integrated with the respective external applications. When they are made available in other data-specific applications, they can be validated and used for other tasks.
Since operational efficiency is important, implementing the right workflow application is essential. A robust workflow app can help with your overall management. You will have cutting-edge features that will help you streamline processes, eliminate redundancies, and helps you achieve better control. Here is a list of some of the best workflow apps:
Here is a list of some of the best workflow apps
1- Cflow – fully customizable no-code workflow app with visual form builder
Creating process workflows has never been this easy and quick! This no-code workflow app can be used to automate critical business workflows like finance and accounting, procurement, HR and Admin, and sales and marketing. The visual form designer uses the simple drag-and-drop method for creating workflows for any type of business process.
2- Trello – best task management app that uses cards to organize work
Managing deadlines, tracking task statuses, and productivity metrics all in a single view! Trello is a project management software that uses cards to organize all the work details. This project management software comes with an in-built automation feature that takes tedious tasks off your plate and sharpens your focus on actual work.
3- Clickup – one of the most flexible workflow apps that works on task hierarchy
Organizing projects under the Hierarchy in Clickup enables extreme customization. This is one of the most flexible workflow apps that enhances your productivity and scales up with business growth. You can easily create projects for each of your workflows and then assign related tasks to people in the team.
4- Process Street – best workflow app for managing recurring workflows
Easy and quick creation of procedure documents using drag-and-drop interface! Process street is a process and workflow management tool that can automate recurring tasks effectively. This workflow app offers integrations with more than 1000 apps via Zapier for even better workflow automation. Rules can be set to automate tasks and save time for more important work.
5- Pipefy – workflow app that launches workflows based on triggers
A cloud-based task management and collaboration solution that helps automate business processes and workflows. This app can be used for promoting collaboration between customers, business partners, and vendors. Repetitive business processes can be effectively automated with Pipefy based on triggers like form submissions, emails or SMS received by the business.
6- Monday.com – flexible workflow app that is based on workflow boards
Creation of custom and automated workflows is simplified by this workflow app. This is a no-code automation solution that puts your team’s workflow on autopilot mode. The software issues alerts and automatic status updates to keep your team on track on process performance. Monday.com also creates project flows that keep everyone in sync.
7- Hive – only project management platform for hybrid work, shaped by users
Multi-step projects simplified with Hive. Hive provides simple workflows for complex approvals. Powerful proofing and annotation tools in the software can be used to cut down your work in half. Project and action templates are provided for automating repeatable steps in the process workflow. You can visualize and track progress in real-time.
8- Smartsheet – workflow app with multiple views and integrations
Managing tasks, projects, and programs via a single dynamic platform. You can standardize key project elements, increase velocity, and improve collaboration with scalable options provided in Smartsheet. Gantt charts are used to understand the dependencies and predecessors in most important project tasks. Smartsheet integrates with most enterprise systems and workflow applications for real-time insights into process performance.
9- Asana – simple to use workflow app that streamlines workflows
Asana is a simple to use workflow management tool that streamlines workflows and simplifies project management greatly. This app can be used to create workspaces for managing projects. Activity and notification feeds, attachments for file management, multiple views, customizable fields, and project permissions are some of the features that this workflow app provides.
10- TeamGantt – a refreshing solution that brings project scheduling online
Planning and managing projects has never been this easy! You can create Gantt charts online by simply dragging and dropping tasks into the project. This is an easy to use project scheduling solution that can be set up within minutes. TeamGantt lets you keep all your tasks, documents, and conversations in a single centralized hub.
11- Tallyfy – workflow app for checklist based process thinking
Automate ley process workflows within minutes. Tallyfy lets you capture and automate every process in the organization without coding, flowcharts, or any complexity. Anyone in the team can track the status of any process in real-time. This solution is used for training and automation without any complex flowcharts, code, or messy documents.
12- Fluix – best automation tool for manufacturing and construction companies
A process management app for field service industries that offers a full cycle of solutions for data management. Web forms and smart checklists are made available in both online and offline mode in Fluix. The automated workflows standardize repeatable procedures and provide frameworks for crucial processes. Fluid is a user-friendly, self-explanatory, and easy to navigate workflow app.
13- Bit.ai – powerful workplace and document collaboration platform
Bit.ai is built for teams and individuals to create, collaborate, and organize all your knowledge in a central repository. You can create fast dynamic notes, documents, wikis, knowledge bases, projects, client deliverables, technical docs, training guides, and client portals, with Bit.ai. Individuals, small teams, or big organizations can use this software to collaborate from anywhere.
14- Lucidchart – all-in-one diagram platform that maps out every phase of the project
Lucidchart is the perfect process mapping tool that helps you think through and map out each phase of your project. This tool can be used for creating flowcharts, product specs, and org charts for every phase of the project. You can create and edit shapes for workflow diagrams using this tool. Other features include hiding layers within diagrams, automated diagramming, and notes for commenting and collaboration.
15- Nifty – workflow app that can optimize teams, goals, and processes
Nifty is a workflow app that can be used to set a visual timeline for big-picture goals and build team alignment by automating progress. The workflows can be built for engineering, sales, marketing, product, client management, and IT functions. Team alignment, productivity, and smart business decisions all under a single workflow automation platform.
FAQs
1. What is a workflow app?
Workflow applications or workflow apps are software applications that allow you to represent the conditional logic behind the completion of a task in a process. Workflow apps are all-in-one solutions that can create custom workflows where you can add elements, notes, comments, and collaborate on projects. You can find desktop and mobile versions of workflow apps that allow you to collaborate on workflows.
2. What is a workflow app used for?
Workflow apps are instrumental in bringing teams together by building on workflow diagrams. Workflow functionality can be found in every project management software. The advantage of using a project management solution is that you can also have access to other collaboration features that complement workflow diagramming.
3. What are workflow diagrams?
Workflow diagrams or flow diagrams are diagrammatic methods for mapping out a process workflow. All the tasks in the process along with dependencies need to be mapped out in order to understand the process. Once the tasks are mapped out clearly, it becomes easy to spot bottlenecks and improvement areas. Workflow applications are designed based on the findings in workflow diagrams.
4. What are the examples of workflow applications?
Workflow applications can be used by businesses to automate their key workflows like – employee onboarding in HR, lead enrichment in Sales and Marketing, handling customer service, and CapEx approvals in Finance and Accounting function. Other examples of workflow applications are Invoice and PO approval in Procurement function, Document management, and IT support.
5. Can tasks be scheduled using workflow apps?
Yes, you can schedule tasks within workflows using workflow apps. Workflow apps are used for automating rule-based processes. All tasks in the workflow are executed according to the preset business rules. A trigger action is what initiates a task, and the sequence in which tasks are to be executed is decided by the rules-engine of the workflow app.
6. Can workflow apps generate performance and status reports?
Most workflow apps generate reports and perform real-time analytics on status and performance of the process. The users stay informed on the status of each task in the process. Once the process is complete, the workflow app performs real-time analytics on the process and generates performance reports.
7. What are the different types of workflow applications?
Workflows can be divided into 3 primary types based on the complexity of the process. Sequential, state machine, and rules-driven are the different types of workflow applications. Sequential workflows are usually chart-based from one step to the next, always moving forward. State machine workflows are those that progress from one state to another. Rules driven workflows are those that are executed based on a sequential workflow that is driven by rules.
8. Can I pause my workflow in the workflow app?
Although there is not a pause button for a workflow, you can set pause dates or time so that actions are not executed on specific days. On pause dates, actions will get rescheduled to the next available date/say. This feature is especially useful in sales and marketing functions when you have to manage campaigns that overlap with holidays or other specific dates.
Cflow – The Right Workflow App With Just The Right Functionality That You Need
You need to select the perfect workflow app that will provide the right functionalities that your organization needs. Well, you are at the right place. Cflow is a workflow automation app that runs on Android and iOS operating systems. It is an automation-ready workflow management tool that you readily use to set up tasks. The platform has a customizable dashboard designer, which allows you to experiment and automate all your recurrent tasks. Since compatibility is the most important feature of a mobile workflow application, you don’t need to worry about it as
Cflow is highly flexible. You will get the maximum benefit out of the Cflow mobile workflow application, and its functionality allows users to access the central hub remotely from anywhere. It is compact, cost-effective, and optimizes all your workflows, making it easier for all employees to use without needing prior coding knowledge.
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