Approval workflows is a module that systematically routes a record in EAM to a specific user, or group of users, for review. Approvals can take place in EAM across many different departments throughout an organization. A supervisor may be required to review a work request prior to it being released as a work order. Or the finance department approving a purchase order for spare parts, but only if the purchase order total is over a certain amount.
Approval Workflows can be easily configured to streamline the approval process of these records without the need of a complex status authorization matrix to move the record through various stages of approval. From a single screen, a user can review all pending workflows across all entities, see where the record is currently at in its approval process, and simply click either an ‘Approve’ or ‘Reject’ button to process the record.
Taking the example of a purchase order, an Approval Workflow Setup record has been activated to start a workflow event when a purchase order status goes into ‘Awaiting Approval’ (i.e., Activation Status). Once the workflow event is started, the purchase order status field remains protected in ‘Awaiting Approval’ until the Default Approver user approves or rejects the request on the Workflow Approval screen. Once the workflow has been reviewed and completed, the system will update the purchase order status to the predefined End of Workflow status; based on whether Default Approver approved or rejected the request.
While this is a simple example, more complex examples could include a specific engineering department requiring a Root Cause Analysis on why equipment failed. Or an Environment Health and Safety manager needing to review a safety incident with approval from multiple stakeholders prior to releasing equipment. These tasks are part of daily events within a maintenance organization, but only require approval under certain conditions of the source record, whether that be a work order, purchase order, requisition, and/or a case management record.
Automating these business-critical approvals is paramount to reducing bottlenecks throughout an organization’s processes, ensuring compliance and accuracy of who is responsible for approval review, and providing an easy mechanism to administer these business rules across various entities throughout EAM.