What is an approval workflow

Overview

An approval workflow refers to a predefined sequence of steps and processes that are followed to obtain approval or authorisation for RFQs and award decisions within an organisation. It typically involves multiple individuals or roles who need to review and approve a particular item before it can progress to the next stage or be implemented. This systematic approach ensures robust governance and supervision over procurement operations, instilling confidence in staff members when handling new tenders and contracts.

Approval Workflows are an optional feature for organisations. If you wish to enable this feature for your organisation, reach out to your Customer Success Manager for further details and assistance.

Key features

When preparing approval forms and routes:

• Configure approval templates (forms) for requesters to complete to provide key details and attachments to approvers
• Configure multiple approval routes (sequences of specific approvers) for different approval scenarios
• Organise routes within groups for improved route selection experience for requesters.
• Level-based approval workflows - with the ability to have one or more approvers on each level.
• Control the visibility of approval groups at a project level for requestors.
• Set a default route to display for each group; to suggest the most common route.

When preparing, sending. modifying, and approving an approval workflow:

• Multi-stage approvals can be established where one route (group of approvers) follows another - for use in scenarios with different stakeholder groups or partnerships/joint ventures.
• Ad-hoc approvers can be added to new and in-flight approvals (with appropriate permissions)
• Higher level approver(s) can override lower levels with a prompt for comments.
• Admin Users can be granted permission to approve on behalf of a user in any workflow - to expedite approvals blocked by users on vacation.

Application of approval workflows in Felix

Three (3) types of approval workflows are available for use in Felix.

Your customer success manager can enable/configure Approval Workflows for RFQs and/or RFAs for your organisation.

• Request for Quotation (RFQ) approval - This approval is used to establish a controlled and systematic process for reviewing and authorising RFQs within an organisation.
• Recommendation for Award (RFA approval - This approval is used to seek authorisation for awarding a contract or making a vendor selection recommendation within an organisation.
• Variation (to an Award) approval - This approval is used to seek authorisation for awarding a contract variation to an award in Felix.

Approval groups

An approval group is a collection of approval routes. For organisations using our projects features, groups can be made available to one or more projects, allowing users to control the visibility of routes across the organisation.

Approval routes

Approval routes follow a configured series of approval levels in sequential order. Higher level approvers typically wait to provide their endorsement until after the prior approval level have provided theirs. If there is more than one user at an approval level, users can approve the request at the same time.

In cases where multiple routes are applied ("multi-stage approvals"), approvers in later routes wait till the prior route is completed.

To create an approval group or an approval route, refer to How to create and modify approval workflows.

How to prepare and send an approval

To learn how to send RFQ and RFA approvals, refer to How to prepare an approval. To configure the questionnaires for these approval workflows, you can seek assistance from the Felix Support team, your Customer Success Manager or the Project Delivery team.