If you’re an entrepreneur or manager of a business, workflow design is critical to your success. It can make the difference between an effortlessly in-sync team or a business full of bottlenecks that cause frustration and slowdowns.
The workflow designer has the ability to turn any workflow into a visual representation which can be easily understood by anyone in the company. This will allow for more efficient processes that can increase productivity and reduce errors. With these benefits, it’s no wonder that using workflow software to create automated processes is becoming increasingly popular among companies who want to improve their efficiency and save time.
In this article, we will explore how workflow designers can help businesses efficiently design their automated work processes for maximum benefit through an overview of what workflow design is, its benefits, and how it works; an explanation of why workflow automation software is useful in today’s workplace; and the important features your workflow designer should have for the best ease of access and results.
Using Workflow Designers
Workflow design is a visual representation of how workflows should be performed in an organization to improve efficiency. Your “workflow designer” can refer to a person who’s creating your workflow for you; however, it also refers to the particular software program you use to design your software.
With visual workflow software becoming more available, popular, and user-friendly, designing your own workflow process is becoming an ever-more accessible option.
Why Use Workflow Design Software?
Workflow designers can help you become more productive by increasing workflow efficiency and reducing errors through automated or semi-automated processes. They can also make your workflow easier to understand so that other team members can easily learn to use or adjust the workflow when needed without confusion. This will help companies save time and money while getting projects done faster.
Documentation is also easier with the right workflow software, since it makes processes visual instead of only text-based. This approach to process design is basically self-documenting since the very mechanics of your process flow development is also a visual diagram. A workflow designer approach can be used to create models serving the business needs of entrepreneurs, managers, directors, supervisors, engineers, project managers, and developers—any discipline or facet of your organization..
User-Friendly Features Your Workflow Designer Needs
When you’re choosing your workflow software, you need one with the capacity to customize processes for your business needs while being accessible to your key team members. Here are a few of the important features your workflow software needs:
Visual Interface
A main benefit of using a workflow designer is that you can see your workflow visually represented, which can help you understand how to make the process more efficient, easily train employees on processes, and maintain a big-picture view of the workflow.
Low- or No-Code Usability
If you don’t want to hire a traditional software developer that focuses on coding, then no- or low-code usability is a must. This allows you to create workflow designs with minimal coding knowledge.
That means that key members of your team can contribute to the workflow creation process, even if they aren’t specifically trained in coding and scripting. Having input from the people who will actually be using the processes is critical to making processes that work just as well in practice as they do in theory.
Multi-User Accessibility
For your team to be able to collaborate, the workflow software you use needs to have multi-user accessibility, preferably on a cloud-based platform that will enable remote team members to contribute as well. Many modern workflow designers allow for collaboration in this way.
Flexible Features for a Variety of Processes
When you’re investing in creating your own automated workflow systems, you’re looking for customization to your specific business needs. Your workflow automation software needs flexibility in the features it can create so that you can customize each workflow exactly to your business.
Business Rules
Business rules are the basis for automation in workflows. When you build a rules-based process, that means that steps are triggered automatically based on previous actions and sequences. This can remove a lot of the inconsistency and waiting that comes from human error in non-automated workflows. When you’re looking for a workflow designer to automate your processes, you need one that has robust business rules capabilities.
Thorough Training Resources and Support
Finally, it’s important to recognize that you won’t be an expert in any new software you use, even if it’s one with super user-friendly features. That’s why your workflow designer also needs to be one that comes with thorough training resources and a reliable support team to help you work through issues when needed.
Decisions Software
The benefits of workflow design are many and can help a company become more efficient and productive. In order to take advantage of these benefits, it is important to use workflow automation software that fits the business and user needs.
Decisions software is one workflow designer with these capabilities that we help organizations implement with great results. With user-friendly functionality, a large variety of customization options for workflows, and great training resources, it’s a great fit for the needs of many businesses.
Work with ExpressAbility for Workflow Design Support
Even though workflow design is becoming easier to use, the best results come from pairing the right workflow designer with experts who can help you customize your workflows to your needs as they’re created.
A user-friendly interface with the above features will allow your team members to add their input to the process, but engaging someone with the right expertise will then ensure that their contributions are successfully carried out. The combination of getting the right low-code software while working with workflow design consultants will be much more cost effective than hiring a traditional software developer to create custom applications from scratch.
The speed of developing on an existing stack of functionality (Decisions Workflow Platform) combined with process automation experts who specialize in leveraging the platform to achieve business results (ExpressAbility) will turbo-charge your initiatives.
At ExpressAbility, we help businesses implement Decisions software and other workflow designers to create wrinkle-free, automated processes. Get in touch to learn more about how we can help you!
