Salesforce is designed to help organizations improve their sales processes, build better relationships with customers, and streamline internal workflow. Unfortunately, when the approval process within an organization becomes too complex, it can actually slow down day-to-day business activities as opposed to making those activities more efficient.
For example, a sales representative might find themselves waiting for days to get approval for a discount; finance departments might find it difficult to handle requests related to expenses; and managers will often be forced to use their limited amount of time to review requests that could otherwise be approved automatically.
These delays can be caused by poorly designed approval rules, too many approval levels, unassigned responsibilities, manual transfers of work from one person to another, and out of date work flow processes.
Fixing complex Salesforce approval processes requires much more than just decreasing the amount of time it takes to get an approval. To make improvements, businesses should identify where delays occur, make the approval rules less complicated, use automation to complete routine tasks, and create responsibility for each person involved in the approval process.
We have created a guide that explains the most frequently encountered issues with Salesforce approval processes, methods to resolve these issues, and methods to increase the productivity of your workflows.
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The way in which Salesforce approvals work is through mechanisms used by organizations to approve records prior to taking certain steps in business. These mechanisms help organizations implement policies, maintain responsibility for their employees, and make sure that decisions made regarding key areas of operation adhere to previously defined guidelines.
A business might have rules that a manager must approve any discount over 20% given by a sales person. In addition, an employee’s expense reports would be reviewed and approved by both their department manager and the finance department prior to them receiving payment.
Salesforce approval workflows can include several components:
Businesses can choose from several of Salesforce’s automation tools (such as Approval Processes, Flow, etc.) depending on what their organization needs, in order to help automate some of these tasks.
The correct configuration will allow you to keep things organized and in line, but will also help reduce the amount of time that you spend doing paperwork.
Businesses need to first find out what is causing delays before they change how they do things.
A common problem with the Salesforce approval process is having an excessive number of reviewers for each request.
For example, a request for a discount would go from a sales manager to a regional manager to a finance manager to a sales director to a vice president, regardless of whether or not the discount was approved by the company’s discount policies.
Every additional approval introduces a new source of potential delays, particularly when those approving are dealing with other priorities.
How to fix it: Examine each level of approval and decide if it provides the required controls. Utilize approval thresholds to direct requests based on how they affect your business. Routine requests will typically require only a single approval, whereas high-value or exceptional requests will generally require further review.
Approval criteria define what types of records will be approved by which process. If the approval criteria are not properly defined, then it is possible that requests are routed to the incorrect approvers and/or that additional approval steps may be triggered.
For example, if a firm requires approval for each deal containing a discount (even if it’s very small), this will make managers review small discounts that meet all of the firm’s requirements.
How to Fix: Establish clearly defined entrance criteria based upon appropriate Salesforce fields (i.e., discount percentage, opportunity amount, department, region, risk category, etc.). Test the criteria against typical business operations to verify that all requests are processed according to plan.
Approval requests may get “stuck” if the request is assigned to a user that is inactive, a manager that isn’t responsible for the task, or an employee that no longer holds the authority to approve the task.
Organizational changes can make this issue even more difficult. If a company has a workflow set up with its previous reporting system, it could still be directing requests to individuals who cannot authorize those requests.
How to Fix: Conduct audits of approver assignments on an ongoing basis. Utilize manager relationships, role-based routing, and/or establish approval groups as appropriate. Create backup approvers and outline how responsibility will be transferred upon employee movement within the company or departure from the company.
In some organizations, employees will be required to pass on requests, send out reminders, and/or inform the next person in line that they are ready to approve something. These types of transfers of work can cause problems with communication within an organization and make it harder to keep track of where things stand in terms of getting approvals.
An example of this is when a financial professional approves a buying order; however, they forget to inform procurement. As such, the buying order continues to be unapproved even though the required approval has been received.
How to fix: Whenever you can automate your notifications and subsequent actions, do so. Salesforce Flow will allow you to automate updating of records, notification delivery, and coordination of business processes that have been approved. Connect the workflow to the actual approval status as opposed to using individual email messages or spreadsheets.
If business organizations cannot determine where their approval requests are currently waiting, it will be difficult for them to successfully resolve any delays related to those requests.
Reporting provides visibility into who has an outstanding request for approval, what the duration of that request is, and if there are patterns of delays in some departments.
How to fix: Generate reports/dashboards to monitor pending requests, approval times, overdue items, and rejection rates. Then utilize the data generated from the reports/dashboards to recognize recurring issues and assign accountability for resolving the issues.
Businesses can simplify their processes through a structured improvement process while maintaining effective control mechanisms.
Start by documenting how a request moves from submission to completion.
Identify the necessary data elements, the conditions for entering each stage of a process, the approval stages of a process, who is responsible for each stage of a process, what will happen automatically at each stage of a process, and how a process can be rejected.
For example, a purchase request might follow this sequence:
As well, list the exceptions. Depending upon what is being requested, some requests will have to go through a legal review process, whereas some other requests will be able to follow a much simpler approval process.
The process map will help you to easily see where there are too many steps in the process, as well as when it is not clear who should be doing what.
Once the workflow is documented, examine its actual performance.
See which requests are sitting there for too long, what steps in your approval process are constantly slowing things down, and where departments have large numbers of jobs waiting.
Useful metrics include:
Measurements allow you to differentiate whether the issue is with the workflow design itself, or if there is simply a temporary increase in work.
For instance, if delay issues primarily take place at the time of finance reviews, then increasing the use of automated systems for the first step (initial submission) does not address the main problem. The process of obtaining financial approvals needs to be looked at.
Once you have identified where the bottlenecks are in your approval process, eliminate all non-essential complexities within the approval requirements.
Create an approval path for each type of request (e.g., high-risk requests, high-value requests, etc.) as opposed to having all requests go through the same series of steps.
Consider a company with the following discount policy:
This is what allows routine requests to be processed promptly while ensuring that there is adequate review for large commercial transactions.
When you are reviewing rules, review all the potential areas where there could be overlap of conditions, contradictions in criteria, and possible exceptions that may lead to records being sent down the incorrect approval process.
Automation can significantly enhance the effectiveness of the approval process within Salesforce.
Salesforce Flow can help you automate actions on your records (updates to field values), send out alerts (notifications), create additional follow-up actions (tasks), and integrate with other parts of your business logic.
For instance, if an opportunity meets the requirements for a discount review, an automatic process could prepare the file, alert the correct manager, and keep track of all the relevant status updates.
The use of automation may also result in a decrease in the amount of administrative duties that need to be performed once a decision is made.
For example, once an approved purchase request is received, it will initiate the subsequent operations. Conversely, when a purchase request is denied, the individual who submitted the request will be notified as to why their request was denied, and the reason for the denial will be recorded.
The development of an automated process should be done with care. New problems could be introduced into the system through excessive data flow, multiple updates to records (which may result in conflicting information) and/or poor management of dependencies. Before implementing any changes, test the entire process, including what happens when the process fails.
Not every business process requires the same approval mechanism.
Salesforce offers many ways to automate your business processes. You will have to determine which of these options are most appropriate for you based on how complex your workflows are and what you need them to accomplish.
Salesforce Approval Process can be used to manage record-based approval processes that are structured and have clearly defined criteria for submission, steps for approval, and actions taken when records are either approved or rejected.
Salesforce Flow is used as an automated process to update records, notify people of changes made to records, make decisions about how to handle records based upon certain criteria, and many other business processes. Based on what was designed into the flow and the type of features available through Salesforce, Flow may be able to be integrated with an existing approval process, or create a completely different approval process experience.
The Flow Orchestration capability (where possible and applicable) is able to provide a coordinated way of managing multi-step business processes that include multiple participants and phases.
Prior to choosing a solution, review what is currently configured, what licenses/editions are needed, what features can be used, and how the migration will affect your business. Don’t replace an existing approval workflow just because you find a different tool.
The goal is to select the most basic available option that meets your business needs.
Approvals can take longer to occur when approvers are out of the office.
Define the action(s) to take if a customer’s request has been left unanswered for too long.
For instance, a company could send a follow-up email after one working day and forward the request to an assigned alternate approval person after three working days. The time frame for doing so will depend upon how urgent the request is as well as what is required operationally by the request.
Automation of Salesforce may provide reminders and escalation paths; however, the design of such systems should be based on the approval technology that will be utilized and what actions are available.
In addition to establishing the parameters for approval delegation, replacement coverage when an employee is unavailable, and how employees can be reassigned to other positions, it is also necessary to determine how requests are processed during times that are affected by a single employee’s availability.
Incomplete requests create avoidable back-and-forth communication.
An approver might have to ask for the missing parts of the approval package, such as the price, supporting documentation, the reason why this item is needed, and how it fits into the budget prior to reaching a decision.
Enhance the user’s ability to submit requests with greater ease through understanding what data must be collected based upon the nature of the request. Utilize mandatory fields, validation checks on user input, helpful guidance text, and appropriate navigation through screens during the process of collecting required data before submitting the request.
For example, when approving a discount request, you may need to submit the amount of the requested discount, the total value of the transaction, why you are requesting the discount, and what kind of effect this decision could have on your organization.
An improved understanding of the initial data would help reduce the number of times we have to seek clarification, which in turn will allow those who need to approve the use of that data to make their decision more quickly.
Approval optimization should not end after deployment.
Reviewing your workflow on a regular basis will allow you to determine if your changes have resulted in decreased processing times, without compromising the ability of your organization to comply with regulations and make quality decisions.
Compare performance before implementation with performance following implementation. Examine any additional bottlenecks, continuing rejections, and/or unusual routing patterns.
If there are changes to policies or organizational structure, make sure you revise approval criteria and assignment as appropriate.
Regular reviews help to guarantee that your approval workflow in Salesforce remains consistent with the way you operate your business.
The practices listed below will assist organizations in maintaining their approval processes as efficiently and reliably as possible.
Business rules need to be easy to understand and avoid making exceptions when they’re not needed. Business rules that can’t be explained easily will likely be hard to keep up with and resolve problems.
Thresholds of authorization must reflect financial liability, regulatory compliance issues, and business risk; not every transaction requires senior management approval.
Every step of the approval process has a designated responsible party. Identify those individuals who will manage the outstanding requests, handle the escalation of issues, and update the process flow as job duties are transferred.
Test approval of standards; test the refusal of a request; test the absence of information; test the transfer of responsibility; test the process of increasing levels of support. Incorporate user permissions and how the system integrates with other systems during testing.
Use an appropriate sandboxed environment if possible, and abide by the organization’s policies for deployment and change management.
Maintain documentation that covers approval criteria, routing rules, automation dependencies, exceptions, and support responsibilities. Maintaining this will allow for easier troubleshooting and reduced dependency upon single administrator resources.
The purpose of making the approval process simpler is not to eliminate required controls for finances, law, or regulations. It is also important to maintain adequate approval records, restrict who has access to approvals, and document decisions.
As an example, think about a business that uses Salesforce for opportunity management. At present, the current procedure requires five managers to approve each discount request, regardless of its amount.
A sales rep will often have to wait several days to receive a decision on whether they can move forward with a proposal, resulting in delays in proposals and frustration among customers.
The business finds that most requests are for minor discounts to current commercial policies after examining its workflow.
The company changes the way it approves discounts, with routine discounts being approved by the sales manager; moderate discounts reviewed by the regional management; and exceptional discounts reviewed by the senior leadership.
The software will also allow you to create automated email alerts, select a backup approval person, and view status reports on your pending requests using a dashboard.
Because of this, there is less hand-off of approval for standard requests; managers can use their time to make the most important decisions, and sales leaders will be able to see all of the requests that are currently pending.
The exact benefit of this approach will vary depending upon the company’s workload and how it implements this strategy; however, the idea itself is very simple: direct every request to the appropriate person who can decide on that request based on having the most relevant information available to them at that specific moment.
New problems may be created when organizations attempt to address current workflow delays.
Avoid these common mistakes:
Measuring the entire amount of time spent on approving something: Measurement at the stage level is essential for determining which parts of the process are causing delays.
When a business addresses these issues, it will be able to create an approval workflow that is both efficient and reliable.
Salesforce approval processes that are overly complex may delay a company’s ability to sell products and services, manage finances, purchase materials, and perform other critical operations. The primary reason why this happens is typically because of too many levels of approval, lack of clear routing rules for approvals, manual hand-offs of approvals, incomplete requests being submitted, and/or little to no insight into pending approvals.
By creating a workflow map of current processes, resolving issues with slow-moving parts of the process, reducing the complexity of who has to approve what, automating manual steps in a process that are done over and over again, setting up an escalation path for items that need to go to management, and tracking how long it takes to complete various stages of a process, businesses can address many of their problems.
The best way to manage this is to find a middle ground between how fast you can do things and what you’re responsible for. An effective Salesforce approval workflow will provide a quick process for handling everyday business requests and allow you to make sure that the right people review your more critical business decisions.
Organizations needing greater workflow optimization could use Salesforce consulting services to evaluate their current setup, re-architect approval logic, and develop maintainable automation.
When properly used, Salesforce Approval Processes can help organizations make faster decisions, improve operational efficiency, and provide a more satisfying experience for both their employees and customers.
The most common reasons for delays in the process of getting an authorization are: too many stages of approval required; the wrong person assigned to approve something; the requirements for a step to begin are not clear; the people who have to approve something are unavailable; a form was submitted before it was complete; and manual handoffs. Analyzing how long each stage takes to get authorized can assist with finding out what is causing the biggest delay.
You can use either Salesforce Approval Processes or Salesforce Flow depending on what you need. Flow can be used to update records, notify people, and perform other business-related tasks. If your workflow is more complicated, you might need some additional automation or programming.
Escalation and reminder features can be created with Salesforce automation based on the approval technology used and the way it is configured. The design needs to determine when reminders will be sent out; which person will receive escalations; and what will happen if the first approver continues to not respond.
In order to track your pending approval requests, the time required for approval processing, the amount of time that has elapsed since an item was due for approval (overdue items), as well as the workload being handled by each approver, you should utilize the appropriate Salesforce reports and dashboards. Depending upon how the approval process has been set up, there are multiple ways to generate these reports.
Traditional Approval Processes are suitable for organizations with existing, well-defined approval processes. On the other hand, Flow can be used to automate a wider range of activities and develop other types of workflows. Before making your decision, consider factors such as the complexity of each option, how easy it will be to maintain, what features are available, and the potential cost of migrating from one system to another.
If your organization continues to experience delays in the approval process after making simple configuration changes, you have several systems that require integration, you need to revise complex business processes, or you find it challenging to manage your current automated processes, then consider hiring a Salesforce consultant. A consultant will review your system’s architecture and suggest solutions that will work for your business.
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