helping the public sector meet these goals.
Finally, retaining and harnessing intellectual capital in
business is imperative and will only increase in importance.
Integrated workflows help businesses manage the inherent
knowledge residing within organisations, be it in the
technology systems deployed or with their people. All the
information and knowledge can be captured and organised on
an ongoing basis without conscious user intervention, as part
of the everyday business management. Therefore, in the event
that staff members leave the organisation, the intellectual
capital always remains in the business.
In addition, by integrating management information into
day-to-day operational procedures, organisations will ensure
that they have a finger on the pulse of their business, giving
them the flexibility and agility to make well-informed and
timely business decisions. For example, workflows can be
designed in a way that gives organisations a view on every
aspect of their business including KPIs, budgeting, and
business forecasting. Furthermore, data can be collected and
collated so that it expressly meets the auditory and
transparency requirements of compliance. This means that
organisations can turn an arduous process of data collection,
business intelligence gathering and management into a
standardised and simplified procedure and one that is a matter
of course.
Conclusion
The global, competitive and online business environment will
push the boundaries of efficiency, productivity, cost savings,
risk and knowledge management across industry sectors.
These objectives will drive automated knowledge-led business
models, which in turn will raise the bar for business and
technological innovation. Organisations big and small, have no
option but to underpin their businesses with IT to become
leaner, more innovative, strategic and agile. No matter how
advanced technology and business gets, there will always be
room for improvement.
documentation quickly and easily. Without automation,
efficient and effective service delivery will be next to
impossible.
An automated system will simplify complex and time
consuming litigation processes, provide failsafe checks to
ensure important deadlines are not overlooked and crucially
offer supervisors complete control over workflows across the
organisation's legal teams. Because workflow technology is
rules-based, it will allow corporate policy to be enforced,
reducing guesswork and personalisation of business practice
by employees. In effect, what this means is that by using
workflow technology, new businesses entering the legal sector
with no prior market experience, will be able to use automated
knowledge to deliver a highly specialised service.
The same argument applies to international business. In
theory the European Union is one single harmonised market,
the reality is far from true. European laws combined with
country-specific laws makes compliance even more challenging
for organisations. By adopting workflow, businesses can turn
compliance into an operational strength and a competitive
advantage. For instance, workflow technology enables
identification of patterns and similarities across regulatory
requirements and reduces duplication effort, delivering cost
efficiencies in managing exposure to risk and non-compliance,
which carries huge financial penalties.
Back-office efficiencies
Also, in an online business environment, the back-office
efficiencies delivered by streamlined business processes
significantly reduce operational costs, relieving valuable
resources for more strategic and innovative activity. In fact, in
the face of tightening funding and grant entitlements, the UK
public sector has been tasked with achieving �7.2 billion
annual savings from government IT and back-office operations,
whilst continuing to enhance front line services. As a tried and
tested way of achieving operational efficiencies, workflows and
re-engineered business processes will play a crucial role in
ITadviser Autumn 2009 17
workflow
The author
Tim Cheadle, General Manager,
LexisNexis Practice &
Productivity Management
business
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