Benefits of a Unified Front-End for Request Management

By Mike Raia | Published April 2, 2013

Use-Specific Systems Have Limitations

Companies have systems that manage their business for a number of areas whether it is for asset or records management, identity management, human resource management, document and content management, customer relationship management, financial management, and more.

hr workflow automation

While each application is extremely valuable to how a business operates, the idea of spending time within each type of application can prove challenging for employees when it comes to request management.

Request management is simplifying the process of a user making and tracking a request or completing a task. What is needed is a unified front-end that can provide a common and intuitive experience for your most valuable asset – your employee.  Simplicity = User Adoption = Success.

What’s also important is having a Request Management system that can tie into your existing applications. These existing applications tend to have very basic workflow features that are much more robust in a request management system like workflow, business rules, forms, activity reports. So what you have are walls built around those specific management systems that cannot provide a common user experience and are difficult to use for requests management.

Request Management Platform Features

A robust Request Management platform should allow for a:

  • A flexible and configurable portal that meets the needs of the user communities
  • Ease of making your request apps available via a configurable portal, mobile or within external apps or websites
  • Ease of defining request apps – processes that consist of workflow, tasks and business rules
  • Form definition library to be utilized within a request app
  • Task alerts, due dates, reminders, escalations to push request apps forward
  • Report configuration to provide insight into request activity
  • User and access management for the request apps
  • Ability to tie into existing XX management platforms

By moving the ease of access to request apps and the rapid development of request apps to a request management system, you are taking out the high development and maintenance costs (been shown to be at least 6 times the cost of a license) of building request capabilities out of XX Management Systems, improving productivity and gaining an immediate return on your investment with user adoption.


Tags
BPM   Request Management   Unified Front-End  

Mike Raia

Marketing the world's best workflow automation software and drinking way too much coffee. Connect with me on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelraia/