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From information islands to an automated enterprise
Almost every manufacturing SME I talk to has already automated something. A mail rule files supplier invoices into the right folder automatically, a spreadsheet macro formats the weekly production report, an approval step in the accounting system routes purchase invoices to the right person. Each of these is a small, genuine win and each one is also, on its own, an island.
An island of automation does it’s one job well and then stops so for example the mail rule files the invoice but nobody's notified that it now needs approving, or the approval happens in the accounting system but perhaps stock records elsewhere might not be updated. In these situations each island still needs a person to notice that it has finished and carry the result to the next step, often re-keying it along the way and that person is doing the job the islands were supposed to remove but just one level up.
This article is about the difference between that and what happens when automation truly connects across departments because, that difference is where most of the value in "digital transformation" lives.
Task automation vs. process automation
Now, it's worth being precise about the distinction, because it's the single most common reason automation projects underdeliver.
Task automation speeds up one action.
It answers the question "how do we do this one thing faster?" A macro that formats a report, a rule that sorts an inbox, an approval button in a finance system, these are all genuinely useful, but they are all still islands.
Process automation connects a chain of actions across people and systems.
This means that finishing one step reliably triggers the next, without anyone in between having to notice, remember, or manually pass it along. It answers a different question: "how does this whole thing flow from start to finish without a person being the glue holding it together?"
Most businesses have plenty of the first and very little of the second which is exactly why the business can feel busy and efficient department by department, while the overall order-to-cash cycle might still be dragging.
What a connected version looks like
So, let’s look at a purchase order for some raw material, start to finish, done properly.
An operations team member raises a requisition and based on the value threshold it's automatically routed for approval (department head maybe or for a higher value a second additional approval at Ops Director level) or depending on value, is approved instantly. Nobody has to work out who should approve what because the routing matrix does it every time, consistently, based on a matrix. Once approved, the purchase order is issued to the supplier automatically by email or EDI, and the stock system is updated to show the material as on order, so anyone checking availability sees an accurate picture, not a best guess.
When the delivery arrives, the delivery note and certificate of conformity are captured at goods-in (probably scanned in) and imported into the DMS where they are OCR’d and matched automatically against the original purchase order. If everything lines up the job proceeds without anyone needing to intervene. If something isn't right for example a quantity mismatch or a missing certificate, it's flagged immediately and routed straight to whoever needs to resolve it (perhaps by Teams, email or a DocuWare task list), rather than sitting unseen until someone happens to spot it three weeks later during an audit.
Now, do you notice what's different here? It isn't that any single step got faster rather, it's that the whole chain moves without a person having to actively push it from one stage to the next.
"But we've already automated that"
This is the most common objection and is worth addressing directly because it's usually true and usually, besides the point. Most finance systems do have an approval workflow built in but, the question that really matters is: does completing that approval trigger anything outside the finance system, does it update stock on another system, does it notify goods-in, does it tell production the material's on its way, does it notify the CRM system?
If the answer to any of that is no, it's a well-built island - genuinely useful but still isolated. The gain from connecting it to what happens next is usually larger than the gain from having built the island in the first place, simply because that's where the manual handoffs, and the delays that come with them, live.
Where this capability comes from
This is what an integrated workflow engine is for and DocuWare’s own is second to none in its configurability and capability. A good workflow engine is the natural next layer on top of IDP and indexing covered in the last article. Once a document is captured and indexed, it can be routed automatically based on its content: value thresholds that determine who approves what, conditional paths depending on document type or supplier, and automatic notifications and escalations (via Task List, Email or Teams for example) so nothing sits unnoticed in an inbox for a week because the approver was on annual leave. Crucially, a completed workflow step can trigger an action in a connected system for example, updating stock, posting to accounts, notifying the next department, updating a CRM system, and this is exactly the mechanism that turns a set of isolated islands into one connected chain - a well oiled workflow AND integration machine.
Where we go next
So, as Ihave shown, none of this works in isolation from the systems you already rely on like your Accounts or ERP, your CRM, your Project management system or your Sales Pipeline System. The obvious next question is how document capture (IDP) and workflow automation talk to those systems, without replacing them or asking your team to learn something entirely new.
That's what I’ll cover in the next article but for now if you haven’t already, please do register for our FREE event at the Aura Centre in Hessle on December the 3rd. where you will see DocuWare in action, get to see the power of IDP and the real value of integration.
Shaun Turner - Technical Director
