Are you managing your workflows or battling with your software?
The list of enterprise workflow management software in the market is never-ending, yet finding the right fit seems impossible. It is amazing to see everything from note-taking apps with a checklist-feature (aka ‘task management’) to rocket-launching software from the 1960s to heavy-weight BPM software (which tragically seems to die every two years) being called workflow management tools.
What is left for the business leader who is searching hard to find a simple solution to manage her routine workflows easily? Who can help navigate through the mess and come out with something that works? How do you know when you are being taken for a ride with software that was never meant to handle workflows? Here are a few pointers for navigating the jungle.
Checklists do not equal productivity!
Truly productive people rarely use checklists. Team members that are constantly running from one system to another spend more time configuring Evernote or picking out different colors of sticky notes than they do getting things done. These tools can be helpful when things are completely out of control, but they often just give a facade of order when the underlying chaos is still very present. Trying to extend the capabilities of these task management products to manage workflows like purchase request processing, employee onboarding, and vendor management is a really bad idea. A checklist has a purpose, but can’t perform like a fully functional enterprise workflow management software.
Intent: Project management; Result: Mismanagement
In an attempt to streamline workflows and manage projects better, some people assume project management software would help. Sadly, there are 3 major issues associated with it:
- Some tools are extremely complex
- Some tools can’t handle even elementary complexity
- Both categories have major pricing problems
Apart from this, there are version compatibility issues, migration issues, interface issues, usability issues, all of it leading to both developers and non-developers disliking it in equal measure.
Most tools today fail to put the user at the center of the problem and lack a holistic perspective. When usability is good, performance goes for a toss. When performance is great, user management capabilities suck. When user management is great, it lacks agility.
The team is busy burying itself in figuring out these things instead of managing the project. Although the intent seems to be managing it, it has the opposite impact.
Complexity kills productivity
Many teams understand that some flashy lightweight options will never work in an enterprise setup. They are more attracted to the idea that complex software is powerful software. So, they make the ill-advised choice of expensive, full-service BPM software. This kind of implementation usually takes months to roll out, and is nearly impossible to edit once it is set without an expensive consultant. So many people are involved in the process, but the key stakeholders who actually handle the process have the smallest voice. These processes are a time-bomb that ticks hundreds of dollars each second as they wait for the process to become defunct. It isn’t the product alone that is complex, even the pricing is. Often times, there is so much hidden cost & convoluted.
Enterprise workflow management software doesn’t need not be complex. 10,000+ customers across 121 countries rely on Kissflow Process for managing the workflows in their companies. It makes lives of people so easy and simple. Get rid of tools that suck & get real work done with ease with Kissflow Workflow.
