Thursday, March 13, 2008

What workflow reporting is available and is it useful?

Standard workflow reports exist which allow the administrator to check statistics such as the frequency and average duration of the workflow processes. However the real strength of the workflow reporting is that it allows reports to be configured which analyze the process statistics in combination with the data involved within the workflow process and the organizational units associated with the process. For example you can determine the average time invested in a failed contract renewal request, the time taken to create material masters in different plants or the frequency of rejected purchase requisitions on a department to department basis. Often, big reducations in cost or cycle time can be obtained without touching the workflow definitions. Reeducating a particular group of users or incorporating supplementary information in a work item description can often cause dramatic improvements on the cycle times of particularly critical subsets of the process. It is not unusual that this may have a big impact on specific products, plants or organizational units. This will show up in the WebFlow reporting in LIS or the Business Warehouse but it might not show up in traditional statistical workflow reporting. Even though the average time does not change significantly, the impact on costs and profit can be dramatic.

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