A Workflow Process System (WPS) automates the flow of your business. WPSs give companies the ability to reduce cost by increasing efficiency, or by personnel reduction. Steps in the WPS often replace processes that used to be manual. WPS is characterized by a special table in one or more database's to track the progress of units of work. Here is a table definition for a simple WPS: Col Column Name Type 1 Index Number 2 Order Text 3 Status Number 4 LastAccess Time This table is a simple WPS table and some are simpler, some are more complex, some have a table to track history, error state, etc. This is just an example of a simple process. Step Description 1 Received order 2 Order in Process 3 Order Shipping 4 Order Error 5 Order Completed Lets describe a simple business process: You receive an order. You process the order. You ship the order. If anything bad happens you set the order to "error" and look at it later. Automating this process will show the usefulness of the workflow process system. A new order is entered into the system from a web site. If the entry program does not put things in the data base, our tools can do this step When the order is processed, the processing person or program marks it ready to ship If you want a "Dashboard" for your WPS, you can check the last acess and count for each process. Filtering LastAccess the Status will give you a way to assess the efficiency of each step. You can now see how long each step takes and where your efficiencies are weakest. If your Companies profitability lies in the speedy processing of Orders, then you now have a simple way to keep your eye on profits. If you keep track of averages by day, you will see if someone is getting faster or slower, you can add resources to your slowest spot and remove them from your fastest to streamline the whole process. If your business process involves something that can be automated, you can now see where to optimize with additional machines. How does Convertabase fit into this? Convertabase can perform any of the functions required to automate, or even create a WPS, Convertabase can help with design or execution. Convertabase's Packages can create a whole process, or "Wrapper" processes that need to be a part of the WPS, but aren't. Convertabase can add legacy steps to your WPS that can't use it now. Case Study: If you are adding a new step to a WPS, and Bob, who has been doing this step is retiring, Bob was looking at the "next" document on the computer and reformatting all the dates from one format to another, (I have changed Bob's name, but I have seen this "step" In a WPS) Bob was setting the process flag for the next process. We create a package that checks for documents to process, reformats the date and sets the correct flag, we label this process the "Bob Replacement" process. Bob, monitors the process for his last few weeks and retires secure in the knowledge that the WPS will continue to process documents without him. The company replaces an employee with a computer that runs 24/7. If more documents are coming in than the computer can keep up with, the package is simply copied to a second (or more) computers, and your process is scaled up. if you have a really small WPS, all processes may be running on a single computer. Print this page.