Is Business Stuck Waiting for Approval? Legacy Email Approval Flow Is Slowing Down Your Business
Email has been the most essential business communication tool for decades and is meant to keep people connected.
Over time, businesses adopted this communication system for approvals at various stages of the business workflow as standard. Technology has evolved, and the way businesses operate has changed drastically. Logins may happen from the workplace, home, or across the globe. Business and lead generation have become volatile and time-bound over the years. Given this, if you limit your business approvals process to a legacy email system, it is a red flag, as it comes with serious limitations.
Visualize these scenarios
- Quotation approval: Your teammate has sent you a request for approval, and it’s buried under many other emails in your inbox. Your teammate is still waiting, thinking your approval is subject to some considerations. Time passes, and the lead is lost.
- Discount approval: A deal is almost through. But the client asks your salesperson for a last-minute discount. This approval request is sitting in your mailbox and has escaped your attention.
- No order history: Suppose you noticed the email in time. But you don’t have enough data to consider, or it’s too time-consuming to review the entire email history.
- Approval lost in transit: Once you approve and the communication reaches the team member, it gets lost in the pile of email conversations. As a result, there may be repeat emails, which can lead to your team sending emails back and forth. This not only adds to delays, but it also creates confusion.
Cumulative effect of the entire scenario: this will cause unnecessary delays, administrative overhead, and a hit to business productivity.
What you have on hand is not a dearth of business leads. Instead, you have an approval workflow problem.
In the long run, this can cost your business more than you realize. You can read more about this scenario in our previous blog; click here:
https://balajiiit.com/leads-going-cold/
Some Approvals Cannot Afford Delays.
Based on everyday business situations, these are a few approval requests that need immediate approval to avoid business snags.
- Sales and discounts – Instant approvals mean sure business
- Purchase requests – Delayed procurement can delay delivery schedules.
- Quotation approvals – The quotation stage is time-sensitive throughout the lead cycle. Because of this, it requires technical or financial verification from higher-ups. This calls for a pre-defined and time-bound approval workflow.
- Logistics operations – vendor onboarding, KYC approvals, and related administrative approvals are all requests that require timely decisions and therefore cannot be routed through email.
- Accounts and Finance – vendor claims, sales team expenses, marketing budget, and more cannot be expedited through email in a time-sensitive manner.
Decisions and Approvals at A Button Click
Here’s how a structured approval process SHOULD work to save your business:
Step 1: Raise request
Dedicated and simple-to-fill forms that support approval requests.
A form that comes pre-filled with all essential information. So, by just entering one critical and unique ID
No lengthy email that actually dilutes the urgency of the matter
Step 2: Route it to the next immediate approver
For example:
- Discount requests will go directly to the sales manager.
- Higher/Lower threshold-value discounts get routed to designated senior management approval.
- Purchase requests are routed to the purchase team with an indication of the purchase limit. So, this helps the approver make the right decision.
Step 3: Approve or reject based on readily available history
A triggered notification brings the approvers’ immediate attention to the requests. This helps avoid delays. Information is readily available for approval or rejection and because of this subsequent re-routing becomes easier.
Step 4: Update connected systems
Once a decision is made, the workflow can automatically update relevant business applications.
For example, an approved discount can be reflected in the CRM, while an approved purchase request can trigger the next step in the procurement or accounting process.
No repeated data entry. No unnecessary hand-offs. Near-zero delayed approvals.
Step 5: Final Status Update
The employee who raised the request, the immediate approver, and the senior manager (if needed) are all notified at once, and the decision is updated in the history for future reference.
What did you do right? People are only involved in decision-making. Automation ensures decisions reach the right people at the right time, so the process is completed within a set timeframe. This way, you are avoiding delayed approvals.
What Needs to be Automated First?
Rome was not built in a day. You don’t need to, and cannot, transform the entire internal process overnight.
Start by evaluating the current approval process – look for the breaks, snags, and delays that cause operational inconveniences.
A good starting point for introducing Business Workflow Automation is your Sales Department.
Map the current process before introducing automation.
6 THINGS TO CHECK:
- Who initiates the request?
- Who approves the request?
- The different approval levels?
- What information needs to be captured in the pre-filled form?
- Approval delay monitoring and reminder triggers.
- Triggers for post-approval
These answers will help you structure a practical automation workflow.
Positive Business Impact?
Consider these improvements over your existing approval system to see how your organization will benefit from Automation:
Faster decisions: A request is raised instantaneously without having to enter details each time. History is readily available. So, the approver has all the information required to make quick, well-informed decisions.
Clear accountability: The workflow designates people to initiate and approve requests, because of which there is no snag in the flow
Better visibility: Reports and queues that flag requests with specific status – pending / in progress /Rejected/approved
Reduced administrative effort: Manual effort is reduced drastically. Automation handles 75% of the entire manual workload and frees human involvement so as to facilitate clear and quick decision-making.
Clear Focus on Business – Stop Chasing Approvals.
A well-structured business workflow ensures the core team focuses on business decisions and execution instead of mundane manual tasks. The entire team will be better equipped to get work done, rather than chasing dysfunctional process flow.
At BalajiiiT, we help businesses streamline internal processes through customized business flow automation and intelligent integration of existing applications.
Ready to stop losing time to endless approval chains?
Explore our Business Flow Automation solutions or book a free workflow audit.
Let’s identify where your business gets stuck and find a smarter way forward.
BalajiiiT – Making Business Work Smarter.
