HR Software and Effective Collaborations

Collaboration as a methodology was originally touted to encompass areas like project management, human resources and knowledge management within the organization. But how does collaboration link the various processes and workflows in different departments within the organization?

Linking processes

To ensure that a company stays competitive and operates at optimum production levels, it is imperative that effective collaboration between all business lines and processes exists and grows. The goal is to make knowledge workers more efficient. In addition to managing a role that is specific to a knowledge area or worker, it is necessary to manage the information that is trapped within a process.

Processes and methods that occur and reside inside an individual's head are usually lost forever, not just because they are undocumented but also because they usually are inherent part of applications that don't talk to each other.

Process automation or workflows entail managing moving data in the correct and proper order. It also means providing easy to use visual interfaces for binding processes together and creating intelligent workflow models.

Systems need to share information with one another in an orderly and efficient manner. Process automation or workflow management operates at the level in an organization, where automation tools and workflow engines exist and where the methods of information management and exchange are defined. It exists at the EAI (Enterprise Application Integration) level and encapsulates data levels, application, and user interface levels.

Enterprise application integration tools that claimed to support integration have so far achieved integration at a level that is best described as elegant and manageable. Attempts to deliver information at all levels and improve collaboration within the organization began with composite applications - specifically web-based composite applications using EAI technologies. But even they deliver what they promise only to a certain extent and fail to account for business process integration and appropriately timed information delivery.

Tools that manage business processes and manage information applications, including workflow and project management already exist as stand-alone entities, but their value cannot be realized at the levels they originally promised. Workflow management is usually not integrated with project management and vice versa. To intelligently source out the information that is trapped within an enterprise and then integrate it with existing applications we need something more than stand-alone tools. Collaboration is achieved when applications integrate with processes, projects and information in real-time across the virtual enterprise.

EAI and workflow technology solutions were designed to do just that. They define rules, procedures and interfaces, and automate them even at the management level. Automating a purchase order or a customer request frees up employees to focus on more strategic tasks, thus improving corporate efficiency in real-time. EAI was designed to bring together heterogeneous systems and share their applications. Ultimately, what both do is streamline an organization's operations for greater success.

Simultaneous delivery of the integrated information at the right time and within an EAI framework is the new collaboration model that supports the following requirements:

• A web-based composite application view to deliver information on a knowledge portal (enterprise information portal)
• Online meetings, real-time design and peer-to-peer task management activities that offer collaboration on business projects
• Present multiple tasks to collaborative knowledge workers in a common view
• Facilitate process-oriented event execution

The market for collaborative applications incorporating people and processes is potentially huge. Forrester Research says that the enterprise collaboration market will exceed $64 billion in a few years. And the solutions with greater potential are those that include the ability to integrate with other applications and other information management resources. Employees, business partners and customers dynamically collaborate, thus allowing enterprises to deliver greater value to customers by synchronizing and optimizing events and activities among a dynamic set of business partners.

Collaboration enables greater speed in delivery, quality and consistency in services and products. In addition to this, they are leveraging the knowledge and information resident in their employees, customers and partners to gain a competitive edge.

Application users in today's scenario are not just the ones directly connected to the enterprise, but also include the virtual enterprise network and its players. In addition to the new work economy and its needs, the shift from EAI (Enterprise Application Integration) to Business Process Integration (BPI) will provide another impetus for this change.

Drilling down to workflows within an organization, we can boldly label workflow as the key enabler of the adaptive, responsive organization. Reengineering business processes within an organization is a sign of a mature organization and process automation takes it there. Automating workflows and following a set of processes when documents, information and tasks are routed from one participant to another in the most proficient method possible.

What are the kinds of workflows?

Administrative or ad hoc workflow: The most generic type that automates numerous different processes and relies on email for transport.

Transaction-oriented workflow: Revenue-generating category that can involve complex business processes like mortgage application processing, insurance claims writing and the like.

Collaborative workflow: Automate business critical processes that are not transaction oriented. Collaborative process management and workflow enabling requirements like document sharing and management.

Reasons to consider workflow management

• Encourage higher workload capacity
• Reduce process time and improve process quality
• Eliminate elapsed time between tasks
• Monitor the current state of workflow and it's progress against the project plan
• Efficient task delivery
• Timely delivery of information
• Tighter control over the distribution of work
• Eliminate duplication of tasks
• Alerts to warn tasks that are slipping
• Discourage function-based activities and encourage critical business thinking with the entire organization in mind

Deploying workflows

Workflows model business processes and control tasks in a correct sequence. The workflow engine monitors and controls all the defined work processes, links all the necessary tasks and applications. It coordinates processes involving real-time conditions, events, messages and users.

Traditionally, all disparate applications worked separately and this impeded homogeneous processing. All the information was locked up in individual applications and was of no use to anyone else. This also led to devastating results when applications hung in the middle of an execution. Previously installed applications possess their own intelligence and storage logic. Therefore, the communication between the workflow engine and the existing applications is a complex one.

An enterprise portal infrastructure combines multiple software applications into a B2B solution. By reducing application clutter and combining processes into a single interface, a portal aggregates all like and related functions into a single interface.

Modern enterprise applications like ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning), CRM (Customer Relationship Management) and SCM (Supply Chain Management) can be described as islands of automation designed to deliver optimum results within their realm.

The Internet and B2B concepts demand building bridges across these islands. EAI solutions focus primarily on the movement of data from application-to-application as part of a business process.

With the mutual use of middleware and EAI (Enterprise Application Integration), even tasks that occur outside the workflow management system can be controlled securely and reliably. The advantage here is that complete integration of the process management with existing application software and all the information located within, irrespective of the platforms is also possible. Such improved control mechanisms and customer-oriented access to information increase efficiency and productivity.

Rapid response is a common expectation of customers, suppliers and partners and the deployment of workflow automation is vital to this response.

Integration of people-to-people workflow and application-to-application automation of EAI on a unified platform is what drives heterogeneous business process management (BPM).

Widening the scope of workflow

The Internet widens the scope of any concept. Workflow concentrates on managing and controlling internal business processes. Through the Internet, organizations can afford a low-cost opportunity to extend their internal processes and make them transparent to the outside world. Organizations can extend their services to all connected users, and in the case of extending workflows outside the enterprise; an organization can offer suppliers and partners' access (limited) to their internal systems. Workflows can then be deployed across organizations and multiple enterprises.

Enterprise collaborartion is a process where a collaborative workspace becomes a platform for the efficient development of collaborative applications that can enrich a company's relationships. Combining collaboration and application -to - application integration fuses business space into a single podium where the entire business relationship can be created and nurtured.

As Gartner said, "By the year 2005, your enterprise will be collaborative…or it won't exist at all".