How to Define Workflow with SAP ECC

Workflows are automation tools which help an organization to automate the checks and balances while efficiently executing a business process in an end-to-end manner. As you can imagine, there are various people belonging to various departments who work in an interdependent mesh to fulfill the business process. Also, certain users participate only on a needed basis. For example, consider a scenario where if a purchase order worth more than $ 100,000 is raised, it needs an approval from the purchase head. In this case, purchase head’s participation is limited to reviewing and approval of large purchase orders only.

A workflow is a great tool to streamline the process and to have a better coordination among the business stakeholders. Apart from notifying the business users when their participation is required, it also executes checks and balances in an automated manner.

Video demonstration

Having understood the significance of workflows, let us look at how we can configure a workflow in SAP ECC. To summarize, the video link below demonstrates all the important aspects of workflow which are:

1. Defining a new workflow to send notification on Sales order change
2. Various panes of workflow builder
3. Use of conditional checks
4. How to test workflows
5. How to check the notifications in the business workplace

Business Advantages of Using workflow

The following are the main business reasons why workflows could be useful to an organization.

1. Efficiency – Workflow can cut down manual communication and make the business process more efficient.
2. Automation – The time taken for the end-to-end business cycle can be reduced by having optimized workflows for approvals and validation checks.
3. Reduction in paper work – Approvals can be done by using workflows as well. Thus, this will reduce a lot of manual paperwork and the Senior Management can have access to all the details in the system and can decide their actions based on that.