Smooth Sailing
in the Payables Community

The Networked Business is mostly about ensuring smooth sailing among the various people
and applications in the Payables Community.  Critical to an efficient journey is the discipline
of workflow engineering.

workflow engineering (n.) – the application of engineering principles and practices to workflow resulting in inventing, innovating, designing, and improving business systems and processes.

Workflow Engineering in Payables

In the case of processing payables, Workflow Engineering uses the practice of thoroughly understanding the problems people in the Payables Community experience, then applies technology creating innovative and often transformative solutions.  Considering the variety of people, disciplines, tasks, and applications involved in the Payables Community, doing this well is challenging, but when successful, delivers the promise of the Networked Business.

Delivering the Networked Business Promise

In upcoming posts I will illustrate how Workflow Engineering helps deliver this promise.
Among the aspects:

• User Experience – each person in the Payables Community has tasks to complete. Workflow Engineers evaluate these tasks, and using the practice of Human Centered Design, design user environments that streamline activities optimizing the processes and the effectiveness of the people performing the tasks.
• Enterprise Application Integration – both sellers and buyers use a variety of applications from numerous providers. Workflow Engineers evaluate these applications looking for opportunities to share information and functions in ways that complement the user experiences of those in the payables process often delivering results beyond the scope and capabilities of the individual application. Perhaps the most important innovation to help the Networked Business is the emergence of web service application programming interfaces, and their impact on enterprise application integration.
• Insight and Decision Support – Workflow Engineers work hard at understanding the underlying business objectives surrounding payables, and how these fit into organizations’ missions and cultures. Armed with this, they can identify areas to apply data analytics that provide the insight necessary for executives and managers to make decisions that result in shortest-term measurable improvements that align within the context of their overall business strategies.
• Transformative Technology – using what I call the “Self-Cleaning Oven Principal”, Workflow Engineers skillfully apply transformative technology in solving problems within the community in ways often not expected, or predictable at first blush. The technologies at the heart of the Networked Business such as smartphones, cloud, and data analytics are inherently transformative.  Other technologies such as blockchain and Internet of Things (IoT) present the opportunity to make transformative change in the Payables Community.