Workflow Automation / Process Management software

meStevo

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I've been a JIRA / Confluence admin for the last several years. Big fan, obviously. If it fits what you are looking to accomplish they've got some good docs and you can spin up a cloud version for evaluation in a few minutes.
 

ToeMissile

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Do you have E3+ of O365 or on premise SharePoint already?
Sometime in Q3 iirc we moved to O365, but the vast majority of people are still on whatever licensing we had before (standalone office 2010 licenses). There are only a dozen or so users on E3 licenses, from what I recall. But basically basically yes, O365 E3 licensing as well as on premise sharepoint (not sure of which version/release, 2008? 2010?). Sharepoint is currently only used for two or three very basic workflows: Hardware needs to be delivered to a customer(sales rep fills out form, emails are sent out to notify next person inline. After each step is completed in whichever system or environment, they go back to sharepoint, update the status of the order and the next notification goes out.

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ToeMissile

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I've been a JIRA / Confluence admin for the last several years. Big fan, obviously. If it fits what you are looking to accomplish they've got some good docs and you can spin up a cloud version for evaluation in a few minutes.
Poked around their website, looks pretty nice. Seems to be directed more at project based work versus sales/service.

I guess a little more company background would have helped. We're in office equipment sales and service.
 

meStevo

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Yeah, I'd recommend JIRA for anything that needs a workflow, for the most part. Sales and whatnot there are probably better fits.
 

Frenzied Wombat

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I've been doing business process automation for years and have experience with multiple products. My recommendation is either K2 BlackPearl or Nintex, either of which bolts onto SharePoint. If your only interest is using SharePoint as the form/document repository for workflow documents, and don't need much back-end integration with other systems, go Nintex. If you need to tap into CRM systems, web services, etc, then go with K2.

Both systems will allow you to develop some fairly complex workflows with little to no coding skills. SharePoint alone does have workflow capability, but it is limited and primitive in comparison to what these products add to the mix. Throw in a product called NSI Autostore, and you can even extend the workflow to scanned documents.. Putting together workflows like this is probably one of the best ways to impress management and embarrass your development team. I've put together onboarding/offboarding workflows, invoice approval workflows, expense reports, etc.. All with no code.
 

ToeMissile

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We aren't stuck on using anything in particular. But we do need to interface with our ERP and CMS, both running on sql server 2008r2 dbs.

Funny you mention autostore, we sell it but use it ourselves. Our document repository is Xerox Docushare. It was set up poorly and has shit for any sort of indexing or meaningful structure that i can see. Its an enormous pain in the ass to track down old contract documents.

Will check out K2.
 

Frenzied Wombat

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We aren't stuck on using anything in particular. But we do need to interface with our ERP and CMS, both running on sql server 2008r2 dbs.

Funny you mention autostore, we sell it but use it ourselves. Our document repository is Xerox Docushare. It was set up poorly and has shit for any sort of indexing or meaningful structure that i can see. Its an enormous pain in the ass to track down old contract documents.

Will check out K2.
Dump Xerox Docushare and replace it with SharePoint. You can setup Autostore to scan directly into SharePoint, including forcing metadata/column input directly at the scanner/copier. So for our contract management workflow, people scan in the contract at the scanner, enter in relevant metadata during the scan (contract term, department, auto-renewal yes/no, renewal reminder window, etc). As soon as Autostore sticks it into SharePoint, that kicks off a K2 workflow for contract review with Legal, approval, and then a reminder when the contract is coming due. In addition, Autostore OCR's the contract scan, and SharePoint full-text indexes it. This means people can search the entire contract repository by keyword as well. We have a similar setup for A/P and invoice approvals..