Regardless of the price shown, all items in this section are free once you have logged in as a premium member, or you place the item in your cart and login at checkout. 

This educational guide is a vendor independent primer for understanding the many facets of workflow and how proper implementation is key to maximizing productivity and benefitting the bottom line.

What is workflow? Unfortunately there is no universal definition. The term “workflow” is used to describe a concept, a set of technologies and an entire category of products. Since its inception two decades ago, workflow has become linked with many software categories, including electronic mail, groupware, document imaging, document management, and forms processing. With vendors continually stretching the already elastic definition of the term, it is very difficult to understand where and how workflow fits within a work environment, and to grasp the differences that exist among workflow products, architectures, and approaches.

Workflow is a technology tool that enables business process automation and management. Before computer automation, work was accomplished by combining all necessary information, such as letters, forms, photographs, notes, receipts, and invoices, into a file folder that was then delivered by hand or mail to each of the individuals involved in completing the business process associated with that folder of work. This “assembly-line” style of work has been the model of efficient production-oriented tasks since the last turn of the century. However, this methodology is plagued with problems, including lost and misfiled information, delays in routing, and difficulty in monitoring the status of work in process.