Enterprise workflow automation: What a large organization needs

If you’re researching enterprise workflow automation, you’ll need something a bit more specific than a general intro to automated workflows. While there are many of those guides out there, they won’t help you understand what you need as an enterprise.

Enterprises have much more complex needs when it comes to automation than other businesses. In our experience of working with enterprises like NVIDIA, Siemens Smart Infrastructure, and Ogilvy, large organizations should be looking for five key features when building their workflow automation strategy  (and deciding on the right software to do so):

• Smooth, sophisticated functionality and setup
• Customization to fit every process at scale
• Automation across integrations
• Artificial intelligence (AI)
• Enterprise-level security and governance.

Instead of generic information about automating workflows, this guide focuses on those specific features and how they meet the needs of enterprises when it comes to workflow automation. 

We’ll discuss key applications and benefits of enterprise workflow automation and how to implement it at scale. We’ll also use real-life examples from enterprises that use Wrike — our complete work management system — to improve the efficiency of their business processes. 

The case for enterprise workflow automation: Key applications and benefits

Workflow automation isn’t a new concept for most enterprises, but the scale and sophistication with which it can now be implemented have changed dramatically. So, before diving into the software that supports automation, it’s worth understanding where it delivers the most value and why so many large organizations are making it a strategic priority. 

Enterprise workflow automation has applications across virtually every department of a large company. Crucially, it also has the potential to help those departments collaborate on workflows with far less friction.  

IT teams, for example, can automate tasks to handle high-volume, repetitive requests like password resets, access management, and ticketing, freeing up their skilled engineers for the complex problem-solving that demands more manual effort. 

In human resources, automation ensures every step of the employee lifecycle — from onboarding new hires, to managing benefits, to offboarding — is consistent, compliant, and efficient. 

And with enterprises generating enormous volumes of documents, automated document workflows can handle everything from file generation and approval routing to metadata extraction, without a team member lifting a finger to do so. 

The benefits of enterprise workflow automation include:

• Increased efficiency, as rule-based automations replace the manual tasks that can suck time from higher-value work 
• Improved accuracy, as automations handle the routine data entry and transfer tasks, reducing the chance of human error 
• Enhanced visibility, as automated workflows can be set up to create clear audit trails and detailed overviews, making it easier to track progress on each initiative and your project portfolio as a whole 
• Scalability, as automation allows enterprises to handle growing workloads without adding to their headcount. 

How AI is transforming enterprise workflow automation

It’s worth noting that advances in AI workflow automation have taken these benefits even further. 

AI tools can analyze large data sets quickly and surface insights that help teams make smarter, faster decisions. Plus, while older workflow automation tools required technical expertise to set up and maintain, modern AI-powered platforms help teams build and deploy sophisticated, end-to-end automations without writing a single line of code. 

For enterprises, this is a game changer, because it moves automation out of the realm of IT service management and opens up opportunities for managers and team leads to identify areas to optimize, test solutions, and implement automations independently — and then to tweak those triggers from project to project and maximize their team’s efficiency. 

For example: 

• To optimize resource allocation, AI agents can scan the data associated with a project to identify and mitigate risks. This gives a deeper understanding of the balance of cost and capacity, and keeps teams working to more realistic timelines. 
• To generate real-time project insights, natural language processing models can turn screeds of notes, comments, and project data into updates that inform decision-making.
• To reduce delays between workflow stages, AI can automate repetitive communication tasks, like routing work to available team members and automating follow-ups. It’s worth noting that enterprise workflow automation software should also integrate with the other tools your teams rely on, syncing data across platforms to further increase efficiency in this area. 

In fact, we estimate that, using Wrike’s workflow automations and AI agents, every member of a team can get up to 10 hours back, every single week. This has the potential to transform the way enterprise teams work and deliver massive benefits in terms of productivity, collaboration, and oversight. 

What makes enterprise workflow automation unique? 

Workflow automation can benefit organizations of any size, because all businesses handle some degree of repetitive work. But the fact is, the requirements of a large enterprise demand a different caliber of workflow automation than the more basic tools can provide. 

To be truly effective, enterprise workflow automation tools must be able to handle: 

• High task volume and complexity. Enterprises run hundreds of workflows simultaneously, and often with dependencies that span multiple teams, departments, or locations. Their workflow software has to support all this, without becoming so complex that it’s difficult for teams to adopt. 
• Contrasting processes and needs. Different departments within an enterprise have entirely different processes, approval requirements, terminology, and tools. Enterprise automation needs to be configurable at the level of the individual team, so they’re not held back by workflows that don’t match their tasks, and on the enterprise level, to power collaboration across teams.
• Multiple, critical integrations. Enterprises don’t just run on one or two tools — they have a sprawling technology stack. This means any automation tool that’s up to the task needs to integrate seamlessly with multiple platforms in the ecosystem, to reduce silos and ensure no tasks, documents, or updates fall through the cracks. 
• Strict security and governance requirements. More users, more data, and more stringent compliance obligations mean enterprise automation software needs to come with robust, usually role-based access controls, clear audit trails, and enterprise-grade security features. 

In the sections below, we’ll look at how our enterprise work management platform, Wrike, addresses each of these requirements and why it’s become the platform of choice for some of the world’s most recognizable brands. 

How to implement enterprise workflow automation (with examples from Wrike) 

There’s no one way to implement workflow automation at the enterprise level, and even with the most user-friendly tools, there are a lot of moving parts to consider. That’s why this section includes examples of enterprise workflow automation for a range of task types and industries. We’ll show you the potential of workflow automation for enterprises, and what’s possible with Wrike’s automation features.

1. Wrike lets you easily automate the tasks and workflows you need 

Wrike automation lets enterprises reduce the amount of repetitive manual work they have and minimize the rate of human error. With Wrike, you can automate many simple day-to-day tasks, such as:

• Assigning tasks to team members who have capacity
• Creating dependencies between individual tasks
• Notifying team members of upcoming or missed deadlines 
• Changing the status of tasks in real time
• Emailing external clients when assets are ready for approval
• Setting up calendar events for scheduled meetings

These automations help you cut down on the repetitive administrative work that takes up so much time in many enterprises. As a result, it can help you improve efficiency across your organization by letting teams focus on more valuable work or relationship-building tasks that can increase customer satisfaction. 

Setting up your automations shouldn’t become a fiddly, time-consuming task in itself. That’s why Wrike has dozens of ready-to-use automation use cases, organized in categories such as reminders and @mentions, custom fields, assignment and workload, and more. These can be adjusted to suit your team. And if the specific automation rule you need is not there, it’s simple to add it in a couple of clicks. 

No coding is required, meaning that project managers or team leaders don’t need to ping the tech team to get automations set up. Instead, the automation rules have a simple “when/then” structure, making them effortless to put together. 

For instance, your automation rules will look like this:

• When the statuses of tasks (from a certain project) don’t change for five days from “Pending changes,” then @mention assignees and leave a comment.
• When the status of projects (from a certain space) changes to “Completed,” then move the projects to the “Archive” folder.

Unlike those of other project management tools, Wrike’s automations are not limited to single tasks or simple notifications. Instead, you can set up automations so that workflows are automated from end to end, from the moment of intake to completion.

Example: Let’s say you’re part of a creative and design team. When an asset is requested, Wrike’s automation can automatically set up the entire workflow that follows. This includes capturing information from an AI-powered dynamic request form to populate the task, creating dependencies and triggers within the development process, scheduling key milestones in development, notifying the different team members whose input will be needed, and visualizing the task on both their personal dashboards and the team overviews. This takes your team smoothly through each stage of the workflow from ideation to approval. 

How Electrolux spends 30% less time on projects with Wrike

Electrolux is a Swedish designer and manufacturer of luxury home appliances. With over 50,000 employees across the world, the brand is a household name. 

Electrolux’s global packaging design team wanted to improve the workflows they used to create, edit, and approve product packaging. Specifically, they wanted software to cut time-consuming admin so that they could focus on the assets.

In Wrike, they found exactly that. Thanks to Wrike, Electrolux’s design team has been able to reduce the time they spend on projects by 30%, while sending half as many emails.

“A big part of our work is that we need to create layouts for the packaging and there are a lot of stakeholders that need to comment, approve, review, and make changes required,” Johan Alm, Design Coordinator at Electrolux, explains.

“When we email back and forth with design comments, it takes a long time and causes a lot of mistakes,” Alm says. “Now we can review the design layout straight in the program, and our designers love it.”

Overall, the functions of Wrike are helping our team. It’s such an easy and efficient tool for us.

Johan Alm, Design Coordinator 

2. Wrike’s automations can be customized to fit different teams, departments, and projects

We can confidently say Wrike is one of the most customizable workflow management tools out there. It’s built to fit around the way you work, rather than forcing you into a different way of working. 

As an enterprise, you’ll have lots of different teams working on different projects. While a workflow’s structure, nomenclature, or the rule itself might be appropriate for one team, it might be completely irrelevant to a different one. Your automations should give you the flexibility to deploy rules and automations only where they’re needed. 

With Wrike, automations can be managed at the account or space level. Account-level automations can apply to every workflow to reduce inefficiencies across the organization, while those managed at the space level can apply rules to only the relevant business operations. 

Automation rules apply to tasks, projects, and all custom item types — i.e., the items that are unique to your team. At the space level, you can define the scope of your automations so that these processes only apply to relevant tasks. 

For instance, if your marketing team prefers to receive deadline notifications over Slack rather than email, you can apply that rule to that specific department. Similarly, different teams will have different project statuses, which will require specific rules. 

What’s more, when you work in Wrike, your team overviews can be customized to meet each team’s needs, too. 

With our tools, you can maintain both team-level and portfolio-level dashboard overviews that visualize the same project tasks and workflow metrics. When your workflows exist in different spaces, you can apply AI-driven task prioritization to help you plan and direct your teams. Wrike will also draw data from different areas of your enterprise to provide predictive analytics and timely risk alerts to help you tackle bottlenecks, delays, and issues with resource allocation before the effects ripple out across your organization. 

3. Wrike powers automations across all your integrated apps

As an enterprise, your teams will be using a range of apps, tools, and software alongside any workflow automation solution. For any automations to reach their full potential, they need to function across apps too.

Wrike can integrate with over 400 different apps, SaaS tools, and software platforms. These include the Microsoft Suite, Adobe Creative Cloud, Salesforce, and many more. Wrike connects with them all and syncs your project data in both directions. This makes workflows more efficient wherever you’re working, and increases the accuracy of your project overviews and reporting.  

It’s easy to set up an integrated, automated workflow across apps using the same "when/then" rules: 

• When a task changes status, then send an email or set up a Google Calendar event
• When it’s a day before a deadline, then send a Slack message
• When you complete a project, then create an invoice in QuickBooks

This way, you can use a single automation platform — Wrike — to manage your business workflows across all your tools. It stops tasks, project statuses, and other crucial information from getting siloed within a tool or team.

Again, implementing these automations doesn’t require any code. Wrike offers a completely no-code solution for enterprises. Instead, it uses prebuilt connectors and prepackaged automated workflows to connect to apps, so all you need to do is simply set up the rule. 

How Siemens Smart Infrastructure made 10% productivity gains using Wrike

Siemens Smart Infrastructure is a German enterprise working across manufacturing, transport, industry, and more. Siemens is the largest industrial manufacturing company in Europe, with more than 14,000 employees across 20 countries. 

The enterprise works on many projects at the same time, large and small. As Hannes Leitner, Process Owner, Project Execution at Siemens Smart Infrastructure, explained, the company’s challenge was to be margin-efficient across all those projects. 

To achieve that, Siemens wanted a tool that would make onboarding and complex workflow management really easy and intuitive. The company chose Wrike — and made 10% productivity gains across the organization. 

“In Wrike, we create project templates and end-to-end workflows to fit the reality in the countries,” Leitner explains. “We created a flexible project template, where the project reflects the size and complexity of the customer project. And we also customized Wrike according to four different building disciplines: comfort, security, fire safety, and energy and performance services.”

“Wrike helps us collaborate in the best possible way, and it gives our teams the support they need to work better. We could roll out a tool on a global scale, and we were also able to offer a secure and integrated tool,” says Leitner.  

Wrike provides a flexible system infrastructure that is easily configured to meet our business needs. While there are differences in the use cases across our organization, we are all working on projects and are able to standardize globally, on key functions, as well as exchange best practices in our implementation around the world.

Damian Robles, Operations Standards Manager

4. Wrike uses AI to identify further automation opportunities

When using Wrike, you’ll be able to set up new automations and workflows quickly. However, across your various projects and spaces, you may not be able to identify all of the automation opportunities that could be useful.

In fact, in an enterprise organization, it could be an enormous task to track all the manual processes that could be automated. But if you don’t do this, you’ll miss out on the chance to improve your efficiency even further. 

To help improve your business optimization, we’ve put agentic AI at the heart of Wrike’s automation. Rather than spending time identifying optimization opportunities, Wrike’s AI can identify and suggest which manual tasks can be automated. It’s based entirely on your teams’ behavior, meaning the suggestions it makes are tailored to your organization.

Over time, it will track the tasks you perform frequently and identify the people who would benefit most. For instance, AI can suggest to the team member who should be notified when a specific type of task has been completed, or that a project should be moved to a specific folder.

5. Wrike offers enterprise-level security features 

Every automated process that touches sensitive data, employee information, or financial records needs to be built on a platform you can trust, and Wrike has made enterprise-level security a core priority since its founding.

At the infrastructure level, Wrike hosts its servers in dedicated, compliance-certified data centers in both the US and EU, with redundant power systems and round-the-clock physical security. The platform maintains over 99.9% uptime, with real-time data replication and a structured backup schedule, ensuring your workflows and data are protected and recoverable.

Access control is granular and auditable. Wrike’s role-based permissions system gives administrators multiple, configurable permission types, allowing precise control over who can access what across departments. Detailed audit logs covering authentication events and access control changes make governance and compliance monitoring manageable, even at enterprise scale.

Try Wrike for industry-leading, customizable, and scalable enterprise workflow automation

Enterprise workflow automation is about more than just reducing manual work. With enterprise-level tools, you can power connected, intelligent processes that help your organization operate with greater clarity, efficiency, and accuracy. 

In this guide, we’ve shared five key aspects of Wrike’s approach to workflow automation: 

• A wide range of automation templates and no-code setup
• Customizable workflows at various levels, as well as scalability
• Workflow automation across hundreds of integrated apps
• AI support to streamline processes further.
• Enterprise-level security for the sensitive data handled by your workflows.

To see how these automations can work for you, book a demo or sign up for a free trial.