As your firm continues to grow through acquisitions, expansion in to niche markets or by other methods of gaining new clients, there will come a point when you realize that your workflow tool of the past is no longer cutting it. Two of the main reasons you first started using that particular system – out of the box approach and a “suite” of products – have actually become rate limiting and do not allow you the ability to adequately leverage your firm’s unique mixture of talent, expertise and resources.
So what do you do now?
You start the process of evolving from a workflow system to a business process management platform. Your next-generation business process management solution should have the following capabilities:
- Logic Driven – A workflow engine should allow business logic to be built into the process. This will intelligently open, close and assign roles and tasks based on the rules of the firm. This ensures the right person is involved in the engagement at the appropriate time, resulting in better control, management and visibility of your firm’s work.
- Live Updates – One BPM platform, Amelio, has a unique and proprietary ability to allow you to seamlessly or
automatically push changes to rules, role assignments, forms or tasks, without disrupting
the current work. This results in everyone following the same process regardless of when the
engagement is started or when the updates are made. Version control becomes a non-issue. - Seamless Integration – Your accounting firm uses a unique mixture of applications. To be fully
leveraged, your workflow system must be the operational hub of all processes. In addition
to having built-in integrations with popular accounting systems, you must have an open
workflow system which allows you to easily integrate with any other system that you use,
accounting or otherwise. This capability results in a seamless process for your users leading
to more efficiency, fewer errors and more time spent on nurturing the client relationship and opportunity, - Open, Powerful Reporting System – When your business process management software is
connected to all of your systems, all of your data will be captured in one system. Anyone in
your firm can easily generate any report, resulting in easier identification of bottlenecks and
which resources you are lacking and allowing for continuous and measurable improvement.
For more in-depth coverage on helping your firm move from just Workflow to a Business Process Management platform, please take a look at out recently updated 2019 Boomer Advantage Guide – Moving From Workflow To Business Process Management,