Intelligent Workflow Management

You Will Never Forget Anything Ever Again

Efficient business processes are a decisive factor in determining your long term success on the market. All those who are able to offer better quality products or services at more favorable rates than the competition, due to the fact that they work efficiently, are at an advantage. At the same time, complexity is on the increase, making it more and more difficult for companies to keep on top of all their processes and meet their deadlines.

ArcFlow lets you link documents with workflows. This allows companies to better monitor and keep track of all the individual sub steps involved in a complete process. Should a process still come to a standstill you will find it easier to review and determine the cause. Improved transparency also increases the efficiency of your business processes.

Workflow Function

Increased Transparency within Your Company

The workflow components group the processes into individual sub steps. First of all, the following need to be defined: Which employees are responsible for which tasks, within which periods do they have to complete these tasks and which prerequisites need to be fulfilled in order that they may complete them. An order processing workflow may, for example, consist of the following steps: Customer enquiry, enquiring at the supplier, possible follow-up with the supplier, sending the quote to the customer, acquiring order confirmation from the customer, ordering the goods at the supplier’s and delivery of the goods to the customer. A list of appointments shows which members of staff are involved in each process, which steps have already been completed and which tasks are still open. As soon as a document becomes available for further processing the responsible member of staff is automatically notified. This puts a stop to latency periods between the individual steps.

Early Reminders when Deadlines Come Up

Should a task fail to be completed within the set time frame an e-mail reminder is sent to the responsible employee. Should he/she be away for a longer period of time then it is possible to specify that a substitute be sent a reminder about either the incomplete task or the deadline (substitution rule). The workflow system simultaneously recognizes whether an employee is unable to fulfill his/her task because a previous step has not yet been completed. For example, the goods should not be ordered until an order confirmation has been received from the customer. The employee responsible for ordering the goods is notified accordingly as soon as the order confirmation arrives.

With a view to meeting deadlines and task completion, the monitoring process can also be further expanded. Should the completion of a task be well overdue, although the previous step has already been completed, the responsible employee’s superior is notified that this step still requires completion. This allows the latter to intervene in the process in a timely fashion, thus avoiding serious consequences (escalation management).

Simple Appointment Administration

ArcFlow also lets you set follow-up tags on selected documents. This means that users can send themselves reminders of both fixed dates and deadlines which recur at regular daily, weekly and/or monthly intervals. The follow-up tags can be set both for individual users and for whole departments. The reminder message can either be in the form of an e-mail or dialog window.

This function can be implemented cross-departmentally in all those areas where specific documents are either updated or checked on a regular basis and also where tasks are completed in association with certain documents. The Accounting Department, for example, can send itself a reminder that the monthly turnover tax advance return is due or that selected invoices need drawing up and dispatching.

Digital Stamps

ArcFlow lets you apply digital stamps to your documents. To do this the user simply selects the stamp from the menu bar on the left and then pulls it over to an open document using Drag&Drop. Once inserted the object can be moved to any desired position. The user can either choose from the templates or define an individual stamp. Apart from the most common stamps, such as accounting or company stamps, the user can also insert his/her signature into the document. ArcFlow’s rights management system ensures that each individual member of staff can only import his/her own signature into the document.

Stamping a document can also be linked to a workflow. For example, the accounting department can immediately tell from reviewing the workflow summary when an invoice has been reviewed and accordingly stamped by a department.

Subscription function

Staying informed in a timely manner

Internal company communication does not always work perfectly. In particular, middle and large sized companies are facing the challenge of keeping employees informed about all important document changes. It can happen more than once that a colleague is overlooked when forwarding information. In some situations this can become quite delicate where major changes are concerned and the person is constantly processing this document.

Folder Subscription

Using the subscription function ArcFlow automatically informs the user of any changes. Having subscribed to a certain folder the user can choose to be either informed by e-mail or a screen message if a change takes place. The message provides information on the type of change and the exact point in time. For example, if accounting sends an invoice to a customer this invoice is automatically filed to the respective customer folder. At the same time, all employees who have subscribed to this folder are notified that a new document is available in the folder. You can have not only yourself but also other people notified about changes.

Document Subscription

The user can subscribe to a document using the same principle. Whenever, for example, the sales manager revises a price list all sales team members receive a notification about the document change. On the one hand, the sales manager does not have to take on this task himself. On the other hand, the risk of forgetting to forward the document is eliminated.

Therefore, the subscription function guarantees that all employees are informed about important changes at all times. As every user makes his own decisions as to which documents and folders are of relevance to him this also rules out the risk of his receiving too much information.