In addition to subjecting individual users’ contracts in general to approval, approval workflows can now be fully tailored to suit the customer’s risk management and internal controls, bringing Weagree into the global top 20% of workflow tooling. Workflows can be defined globally and applied locally, to a template or Q&A-question, allowing for very fast, easy and flexible implementation.
Workflows can be triggered either by the template as a whole (i.e. when someone uses it to create a new contract) or by Q&A-answers (Q&A-driven workflows). It is possible to combine workflows at both levels. For example, a contract may always require someone to perform a general check and therefore need to trigger a template-level workflow, but only demand approval from a particular person depending on how certain questions are answered and therefore also need some Q&A-level workflows.
To enable the involvement of different approvers, workflows can consist of multiple approval units. Each unit consists of at least one designated approver and multiple units can be arranged within a single workflow. These can operate in parallel so that any number of people can review different parts of a contract simultaneously, or sequentially to create a succession of approvals by different people. As with template-level and Q&A-level workflows, parallel and sequential approvals may even be combined for even greater complexity and versatility.
This modular setup means that workflows are dynamic in their composition and operation (context and Q&A-driven). It is not necessary to create and maintain countless context-specific workflows. Defining approval units, arranging them in workflows and then applying those workflows to templates and Q&A-questions can be accomplished in mere minutes. A small set of workflows may suffice for all your actual approval needs, as they only define who must grant approval and in what order, not the conditions for being triggered. Those conditions and their context are determined entirely by how the workflows are applied in the template, making it easy to standardise and maintain the workflows on the one hand and to modify specific aspects thereof on a template-by-template (or question-by-question) basis on the other.
Finally, all stakeholders involved in the approval flow can discuss a request for approval (one-click access to the Q&A): ask the submitter for clarification, formulate conditions for approval, or explain rejection. Such communications are stored with the contract, but also reflected in automated e-mail notifications. The entire sequence of approvals and rejections for a given contract is also made clearly visible in Weagree. Every part of the complete approval process can therefore take place in Weagree, with full – and foolproof – registration of each step and communication.
