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Requirement

Approval interface that routes completed plans for approval

Functional Area

Collaboration

Industries
All
Tags
Workflow
Approvals
DETAILS

Description

An approval interface in a CPM system involves a mechanism that routes finalized plans, close processes, and reports through an approval hierarchy.

Example Use Case

Scenario: A large organization uses CPM software to create detailed annual budget. Once completed by department heads, each needs to be approved by finance staff and executive management before they can be committed to the overall budget.

Solution: An approval interface in the CPM system is used which routes the finalized plans to appropriate stakeholders for approval, and then to their manages and so on. For instance, a Marketing Manager submits his budget, which then routes to the Director of Marketing for approval, and then to the CRO. Once approved, the budget for the marketing department is rolled into the master budget.

Considerations

Budget approvals in CPM tools have a wide range of functionality gaps when comparing an enterprise vs SMB solution. When evaluating this portion of a CPM tool, consider what is important to you. Do you really need 5 levels of approval for the budget? Will these specific features help elevate your team and process, or will the administrativa bog you down?

Function Enterprise Class Small Medium Business Focus
Submit budget for approval when complete Often Often
Email Notifications when approval is ready for review, approved, or denied Often Often
Routing process for various approvers in a hierarchy Often Less Often
Approvers send budget back for edits Often Less Often
Comment chain for a specific approval showing all history Often Less Often
Audit trail of changes made during the approval process Often Unlikely
Role-based approval setup Often Unlikely
Re-usable approval hierarchies Often Unlikely
Approval Delegation Often Unlikely
Using dimension hierarchy and ownership to dictate approval flow Often Unlikely
Data being approved is automatically rolled into the model after approval Less Often Unlikely

Questions to Ask a Vendor

  • Features: Does your approval process include any of the features we need that are listed in the table above?
  • Maintenance: How much work is it to create approval flows each time we do our budget?
  • Monitoring Capabilities: Does the system provide an overview or reports on the approval process, indicating where any bottlenecks may be occurring?