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Chapter 7
                           ERP WORKFLOW TOOLS
                           Most business processes are performed regularly, enabling employees responsible for the
                           process to become efficient in the tasks involved in the process. For example, the sales
                           order process is fundamental to a manufacturing business; the salespeople, sales order
                           clerks, warehouse managers, accounts receivable clerks, and others spend most of their
                           day supporting the process. If the process is efficiently designed and managed, and the
                           employees are properly trained, workers will experience enough repetition to become
                           efficient in their daily tasks.
                               Some business processes, however, are performed only sporadically. Often, such
             200           processes are inefficient, especially when the processes involve more than one functional
                           area. Work may “fall through the cracks,” not necessarily through negligence, but due to a
                           lack of repetition. For example, the process of establishing credit limits may occur only
                           occasionally and may require coordination between the Sales Department, which
                           identifies new customers and gathers basic data (contact names, addresses, contract terms
                           and conditions) and the Accounts Receivable Department, which evaluates a customer’s
                           credit history to establish a credit limit. Unless employees manage the process of
                           establishing a credit limit properly, a new customer’s order may be blocked for an
                           unacceptable length of time. For sporadic processes such as this, a workflow software tool
                           can help employees avoid “dropping the ball” by providing tools for tracking and
                           monitoring the tasks in the project and providing reminders to the employees involved.
                               Workflow tools are software programs that automate the execution of business
                           processes and address all aspects of a process, including the process flow (the logical steps
                           in the business process), the people involved (the organization), and the effects (the
                           process information that documents the process steps). ERP software provides a workflow
                           management system that supports and speeds up business processes. It enables employees
                           to carry out complex business processes and track the current status of a process at
                           any time.
                               The SAP ERP workflow tool, called SAP Business Workflow, links employees to the
                           business transactions that need to be performed. In a normal business process, an
                           employee uses his or her knowledge to determine what transactions to process at what
                           times. Sometimes this work is triggered by an external source, such as a customer call
                           that causes the sales order clerk to perform the sales order creation transaction. In other
                           cases, an employee uses a reporting tool to determine what transactions need to be
                           processed. For example, as discussed in Chapter 5, industrial credit management is
                           implemented by blocking sales orders when there is a credit issue. The blocked sales
                           order report (shown in Figure 5-7) is the report that an employee can use to decide what
                           transactions must be processed to resolve the credit issue.
                               In the case of sporadic processes, the SAP Business Workflow tool proactively
                           connects employees with business transactions using SAP’s internal email system and
                           workflow tasks, which are email messages that can include basic information, notes, and
                           documents, as well as direct links to business transactions. The SAP system can monitor
                           workflow tasks, and if the tasks are not completed on time, the workflow system can
                           automatically take various actions, including changing the workflow task priority and
                           sending email reminders to the employees responsible for the work.







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