Wayne Enterprises gets an order from Tony Stark. While Tony is a good customer, the payments are usually delayed for large dollar amount cheques. Hence, Wayne Enterprises decided to involve an intermediary in the process. When an order is placed, it moves to delivery only when Analyst confirms that Tony’s old large cheques are cleared and Sales Manager approves the order. This kind of scenarios are handled by Workflow. Analyst is level 1 approver while Sales Manager is level 2 approver.

The main purpose of Workflows is to automate business processes with in SAP systems. These processes are usually oft-repeated business processes which can be triggered based on processing in SAP. The end-action of these processes usually lies with specific end users who approves or disapproves the closure of the process. Workflow determines the next step based on the defined algorithm.

In the above example – when the Order is created, it goes to the Analyst who determines that older cheques are approved or not. If not, the sales order will be on hold. Else, it will go to the Sales Manager who will make the decision based on data points available with him. If he approves, the delivery process starts else the sales order will go on hold.

~S