Making business approvals easier to manage

The Approve button was not the hard part. This placeholder case study is about approvals, the rules around them, and the people who have to live with both.

The problem

Businesses needed a way to define their own rules. A request had to reach the right person, with enough context to make a decision, and with a record of what happened afterwards.

Defining the rules

We started with the person setting the rules, not the person approving. If the rules were hard to set, the approvals would never be right.

Showing what happens next

A workflow that does not show its next step is just a queue. We made the state, the owner, and the next action visible on every request.

The result

Average approval time dropped, and support requests about approvals fell. The placeholder numbers are here to show the layout; replace them with your own.

• Average approval time reduced.
• Fewer support requests about approvals.
• More requests approved by the right person first time.

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I can see where it is without asking anyone. That alone saved us a meeting.

”

Takeaways

More options do not make a better approval flow. A small number of clear states, shown honestly, beat a flexible system nobody can explain.