As organizations grow natural levels of ineffectiveness and inefficiencies begin to stall production, and operational capacity stagnates or decreases. In response, organizational managers look inward to determine ways to make processes more efficient and to increase production capacity. Ultimately, all long-term successful companies employ some form of automation for their workflow. However, as many managers discover, creating workflow automation is a skill few have fully developed or acquired and their efforts to achieve efficiency fall short of their promised goals.
Efficient Technology Inc (ETI), which is specifically skilled in designing, delivering and servicing enterprise workflow automation solutions for Fortune 500 companies, presents this paper as a discussion around the benefits, failure points and principals for achieving automation. This paper does not intend to promote ETI's products but rather to discuss the methods, concepts and options available for realizing the promise of workflow automation.

Assumptions

Readers of this white paper should have a basic understanding of workflow (a sequence of connected steps in a business process) and the current results of their processes. The technology concepts discussed in this paper do not require a technology background and should appeal to any and all readers.