A workflow perspective offers similar benefits. Many business activities are structured. Enterprises do not expect people to collaborate on processing an expense claim form; rather, the enterprise defines specific policies about how an expense claim form is to be routed through an organization so that it
is properly approved, is auditable, and is secure. Many people are involved, but the enterprise’s policies specify the coordination required between personnel to meet a defined objective. The successful completion of a predefined business process depends on the coordination of people in completing a set of structured tasks in a particular sequence and within expected time constraints. Historically, this has been the domain of workflow automation systems, which focus on highly structured business processes that exhibit predefined, conditional workflow. If you implement a workflow system on your own, you tend to define forms, specify the routing logic, specify triggering actions that occur when certain conditions are met, specify how data is to be accessed or modified, and provide some auditable tracking capability.