Workflow. Who does what, in which order, and what happens when something stalls.
A workflow is the sequence of steps through which an activity goes from start to finish: who does each step, in which order, with which information and according to which rules. Every company has dozens, and often they have never been written down.
The reference definition comes from the Workflow Management Coalition, in 1996: the automation of a process, in whole or in part, in which documents, information or tasks pass from one participant to another according to procedural rules.
Automating a workflow means letting work pass by itself from one step to the next, leaving people the decisions that matter.
Among Italian enterprises using artificial intelligence, about 18% use it to automate workflows, according to Istat for 2025.
This entry is part of the glossary of AI and automation, where the term appears as workflow. Here the definition widens: where the word comes from, the five parts of a workflow with an example, what automating it means and where to start.
What workflow means
The Workflow Management Coalition, the association set up to give the sector a common vocabulary, in its 1996 glossary defines workflow as «the automation of a business process, in whole or part, during which documents, information or tasks are passed from one participant to another for action, according to a set of procedural rules».
Put simply: a process, or part of it, in which documents, information or tasks move from one participant to the next to be worked on, following set rules. In everyday use the word has taken on a broader meaning, and also refers to a flow done by hand, with no software at all.
An order arrives, someone checks availability, someone prepares the goods, someone issues the invoice. The steps and the rules exist even if nobody has written them down, and they show on the day the person who knows them is on holiday and the order is stuck halfway.
The five parts of a workflow
Every workflow, manual or automated, has five parts. They can be recognised in any process, from replying to a customer to the month-end close, and writing them down one by one is the first step to improving it. The example in the table is an order arriving by email.
| Part | What it is | In the order example |
|---|---|---|
| Triggerthe trigger | The event that starts the flow. |
An email arrives with an order attached. |
| Stepsin order | The activities to carry out, one after the other. |
Read the order, check stock, confirm, prepare, ship, invoice. |
| Participantspeople or systems | Who carries out each step. |
The salesperson confirms, the warehouse prepares, administration invoices. |
| Rulesthe path | The conditions that decide what happens next. |
If goods are missing, the customer is informed with a delivery date. |
| Exceptionswhen it doesn't add up | What happens if data is missing or does not match. |
A price different from the list: the flow stops and a person looks at it. |
The fifth part is the easiest to forget when a workflow is written in a hurry. A flow with no planned exceptions works as long as everything runs smoothly, and at the first unusual order it either stalls or, worse, carries on with wrong data.
What automating it means
Automating a workflow means letting work pass by itself from one step to the next: the data arrives, gets read, ends up in the right place, and the next person receives the task ready. The 1996 definition already said so: the process is automated «in whole or part».
According to Istat, among Italian enterprises using artificial intelligence in 2025, about 18% use it to automate workflows. Many workflows, though, do not need it: if every step follows a fixed rule, a script without a model costs less and makes fewer mistakes. Artificial intelligence is needed in the steps where something has to be read and interpreted.
What a flow that passes by hand costs
A workflow that passes by hand costs twice: the time of each step, and the interruptions between one step and the next. According to Microsoft 365 telemetry data, published in 2025, people working with those tools are interrupted on average every 2 minutes by a meeting, an email or a notification.
In the same report 48% of employees and 52% of leaders say their work feels chaotic and fragmented. A written, automated workflow removes part of those interruptions, because the task reaches whoever has to do it when it is ready, with the information already gathered.
Where to start
You start by writing the flow as it is today, with three questions for each step: who does it, how long it takes, how many times a month it happens. Multiplying the last two gives the time that step costs each month, and you immediately see which one weighs most.
The step to automate first is the one that repeats most often and costs most, and often it is retyping: data taken from an email or a PDF and rewritten into another program. The method, with an example, is on the page about which process to automate first.
How Itria uses it
Every system Itria builds is a workflow written before the code: trigger, steps, rules, exceptions, and the point where a person decides, that is the human in the loop. The first of the principles written in Ethics puts it like this: «Nothing is built before measuring where the business really loses time or revenue».
The workflows run on an automation engine checked by an external service every 5 minutes: over 124 days of monitoring, as of 5 September 2026, it was reachable in 99.998% of checks. Deadline alerts and monthly reporting are two examples of workflows that start by themselves at a fixed time.
Related terms
Human in the loop
The step of the workflow where a person approves, corrects or stops. It is designed together with the others, not afterwards.
ERP
The management software that automates many internal workflows, from order to invoice.
Trigger
The event that starts an automated workflow: an email, a form, a time of day.
RPA
Automation that imitates a person's clicks on programs that cannot be connected any other way.
Questions and answers
What does workflow mean?
Workflow means the flow of work: the sequence of steps through which an activity goes from start to finish, with who does each step, in which order and according to which rules.
The technical definition of the Workflow Management Coalition, from 1996, speaks of the automation of a business process in which documents, information or tasks pass from one participant to another according to procedural rules.
What is a business workflow?
It is a flow of work inside a company. An example: an email arrives with an order, someone checks availability in stock, the salesperson confirms to the customer, the warehouse prepares the goods, administration issues the invoice.
It has a trigger, steps, participants, rules and exceptions, even when nobody has ever written it down.
What is workflow automation?
It is the automation of workflows: letting work pass by itself from one step to the next, so that the data arrives, gets read, ends up in the right place and the next person receives the task ready.
Decisions stay with people where they are needed. According to Istat, about 18% of Italian enterprises using artificial intelligence use it for this.
What is the difference between a workflow and a process?
A process is the set of activities that achieve a goal of the company, for example fulfilling an order. The workflow is the way the work of that process passes between people and systems, with its rules.
The same process can have a fully manual workflow, a partly automated one or an almost fully automated one.
Do you need artificial intelligence to automate a workflow?
Often not. If every step follows a fixed rule, such as moving data from a form to a spreadsheet or sending an alert on a deadline, a script without a model costs less and makes fewer mistakes.
Artificial intelligence is needed in the steps where something has to be read and interpreted: a freely written email, a document whose format changes, a request to classify.
Notes on sources
- The definition comes from the Workflow Management Coalition, Terminology & Glossary, document WFMC-TC-1011, issue 2.0 of June 1996, in the copy kept by the University of Edinburgh, read on 26 September 2026. The same glossary defines a process as a set of linked activities that achieve a business objective.
- The figure of about 18% comes from Istat, Imprese e ICT, 2025, and is calculated on enterprises with at least 10 employees that use artificial intelligence.
- The interruptions and the percentages come from Microsoft, Breaking down the infinite workday, Work Trend Index 2025. The telemetry excludes EU users and measures people working with Microsoft 365; the 48% and 52% come from a global survey. We cite it for the shape of the problem, not as a measure of an Italian SME.
- The 124 days at 99.998% are a measurement by a monitoring service external to Itria, with a check every 5 minutes, as of 5 September 2026.
The flow already exists, even if nobody has written it down. We start by drawing it as it is.
The first step with Itria is a fifteen-minute video call: we look at one of your workflows from start to finish, and at the step that costs most. Write us a line about what weighs on you. We take the first step: what a customer sees when they look for you, and what we found there. Even if we don't end up working together.