Many organizations divide their workflows based on which technology drives the business process. However, some divide them based on which department “owns” the process― the remainder base workflows on the content type they are expediting. Which is the best way?
There’s a strong argument that building workflows (also called content services) based on one of the main content types (archival, transactional, and collaborative) is the most contemporary approach. Let’s take a quick dive into the various content types:
Collaborative content comes from systems that staff use to work with one another. Think email, Teams, or Slack. The purpose of these systems is to optimize the way employees work. This type of content is frequently lost within these same systems. Remember the last time you need to dig through emails to find the correct version of the document? Simultaneously, the staff is collaborating on so many different documents across many systems that organizations may not know what they have -or what system it is stored in. Coupled with a lack of efficient storage and effective classification, most businesses are soon left with a large stockpile of content and no natural way to make sense of it.
Archival materials are documents, metadata, or other types of information that serve as evidence of past events. They act as a memory aid or proxy for those events by recording information about them that can be recalled at some point in the future. Often archival documents are retired from active use but remain in a records management system. Successful archive management includes the ability to identify and classify content so the proper retention schedule can be applied. Auto-classification is the driver for accurate records management and serves as QC for potential compliance issues.
Transactional content comprises invoices, claims, purchase orders, case files, and contracts. In short, all the documents, files, and forms help organizations do business with their customer base, vendors, and partners. Transactional content is usually tied directly to the organization's business and is found in ERP or CRM systems.
Ideally, content services or workflows can be built to serve all content types using solutions such as Laserfiche, allowing staff a single application to access all their workflows. This approach ensures that data silos won’t occur and managers have complete visibility into their processes at all times.
In the end, it's essential to understand your options when picking the right content services and solutions to meet the changing needs of your organization. When executed correctly, most employees will interact with Laserfiche workflows customized according to SOP and use database lookups to populate critical data from business applications without having to log in and out of systems.
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