Approvals: the hidden bottleneck in office software

The invisible queue

Ask how long approvals take and the answer is usually ‘it depends on who’s around’ — a queue nobody can see. Email approvals have three defects: the queue is invisible, so it cannot be managed; it is unmeasured, so it cannot be improved; and it is unaudited, so a decision cannot be defended later. Five minutes per chase email, ten per day, is a working week per year.

Why the informal path wins

Staff avoid formal processes when the formal path is slower. When a two-signature form takes a week and a corridor conversation takes ten minutes, the corridor wins. A workflow system that adds steps without making the path faster does not help.

Make the formal path the fast path

The formal path must be the fast path. Intake forms gather what the approver needs, reminders fire automatically, deputies step in for leave, and the approver clears a single work list. In the engineering case study, approval times dropped from about a week to under an hour.

What to do about it, whatever you buy

Time your current approval cycle for one month — from request to decision, logged without exception. Map the real path, not the policy’s path, and fix the intake first: most delay is spent waiting for missing information, not missing signatures. Give every step a deadline and every deadline a named deputy. And keep the decision log — the day will come when ‘who approved this, and when?’ is the most valuable sentence your records system can answer.

What to automate

Workflow software should automate the clerical work, not the judgment. It chases, reminds, routes, records and finds the deputy; it does not approve against rules without a human reading the request. After installation, the approver should read more of each request, not less, because the intake form has already gathered the material.

Questions this view raises