Identifying and Understanding the Business Process

Before you create any workflow in Oracle Primavera Cloud, you should analyze the business process that you want it to manage. Here are some questions you should consider:

• When does the process begin?
• What are the end results of the process?
• Who is involved in the process?
• Which factors influence the steps in the process?

In many industries and organizations, creating and approving a new project proposal requires input from different employees or groups. Characteristics of the proposal—things like cost, duration, and risk level—often influence which steps are required to get it approved and which employees or groups are involved. These factors make the proposal approval process a good workflow candidate.

For this example, say we run a construction company where some employees are in charge of writing and submitting proposals. These proposals include important information like total budget, start date, and risk level. Low and medium-risk proposals get approved automatically, but when someone submits a high-risk proposal, or if someone fails to specify the risk level in a proposal, we send it to a reviewer. Then, this reviewer uses all of the other information the submitter provided to decide whether to approve or reject the proposal.

While this process seems clear enough for a small group, it can easily get out of hand with many employees and proposals. Fortunately, we can use workflows and forms in Primavera Cloud to automate it.

First, let's answer our planning questions:

• When does the process begin?

  This process begins whenever someone creates a project proposal.

• What are the end results of the process?

  This process ultimately results in an approved or rejected proposal, but with many employees and proposals, it can also result in a lot of frustration. Automating this process with a workflow should make it more reliable, resulting in more peace of mind for the organization.

• Who is involved in the process?

  Each time someone submits a proposal, two employees are involved: The one who submits the proposal and, if it turns out to be a high-risk proposal, the one who reviews it. If you follow this example and run the workflow against a sample proposal, you will assume both roles.

• Which factors influence the steps required to complete the process?

  In our imaginary construction company, risk is an important factor. Whether a proposal needs to be reviewed depends on its risk level.

Now that we understand the process, we can start to represent it with a workflow design.