What is a workflow in document management?

Workflows, or workflow management systems, organise people, tools and processes with the aim of streamlining collaborative work and increasing control over how it is carried out.

What we do in Metadrive is standardise each workflow, setting out the steps to follow, who is in charge of each one and the tasks to be completed. As well as controlling each of these steps, some related tasks are also automated, such as sending alerts, notifying the people responsible or moving on to the next step once the tasks of the previous one have been completed.

How do we implement it in Metadrive?

The workflow functionality can be applied to any document, folder, spreadsheet, etc. This is thanks to Metadrive’s integration with Google Drive. As a result, workflows can be easily automated with Metadrive across all the files users have access to in Google Drive.

What is more, because Metadrive is a tool specialising in document management in Google’s cloud, adding workflows prevents the company’s number of documents from growing excessively and unnecessarily through copies being created and shared among employees. This also tends to result in a loss of control over them, making it impossible to tell which document is the most recent or whether every step of the workflow has been completed.

In this way, teams are able to manage themselves and implement their own workflows, without having to involve the company’s administrative department to review each stage.

Advantages of automating workflows in Metadrive

The main advantages of workflow automation in terms of company productivity can be summarised as follows:

• It is easier to track and monitor the stages of the workflow.

• Time is saved in running these workflows thanks to their automation, which leads to greater productivity and efficiency in work teams.

• Decision-making becomes faster and better.

• The structure provided by automating workflow steps helps prevent possible errors in the process.

• Internal communication improves.

• They make it easier for information about processes to flow between the company’s different departments, as automatic alerts on progress can be set up and the people who should receive them can be selected.

In short, workflow automation minimises work coordination problems within the business, saving the company time, money and headaches.