Workflow. Who does what, in what order, and what happens when something stalls.
A workflow is the sequence of steps an activity goes through from start to finish: who does each step, in what order, with what information and by what rules. Every business has dozens of them, and often they've never been written down.
The standard 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 are passed 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 businesses using artificial intelligence, about 18% use it to automate workflows, according to Istat for 2025.
This entry is part of the AI and automation glossary, where the term appears as workflow. Here the definition goes further: 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 industry a common vocabulary, defines workflow in its 1996 glossary 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”.
In everyday use the word has taken on a broader meaning, and also covers 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 rules exist even if nobody has written them down, and they become visible on the day the person who knows them is on holiday and the order gets stuck halfway.
The five parts of a workflow
Every workflow, manual or automated, has five parts. You'll recognise them in any process, from replying to a customer to closing the month, 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. |
Sales confirms, the warehouse prepares, admin invoices. |
| Rulesthe route | The conditions that decide what happens next. |
If the goods are out of stock, the customer is told with a delivery date. |
| Exceptionswhen it doesn't add up | What happens if data is missing or doesn't match. |
A price different from the price 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 exceptions planned works as long as everything goes smoothly, and at the first unusual order it either grinds to a halt or, worse, carries on with the 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 to go. The 1996 definition already said as much: the process is automated “in whole or part”.
According to Istat, about 18% of Italian businesses using artificial intelligence in 2025 use it to automate workflows. But many workflows don't 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 that require reading and interpreting.
What a flow passed along by hand costs
A workflow passed along by hand costs twice: the time of each step, and the interruptions between steps. According to Microsoft 365 telemetry 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 workflow that's written down and automated removes some of those interruptions, because the task reaches the person who has to do it when it's ready, with the information already gathered.
Where to start
Start by writing down 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. Multiply the last two and you get what that step costs each month in time, and you immediately see which one weighs most.
The step to automate first is the one that repeats most often and costs most, and it's often a retyping job: data taken from an email or a PDF and typed 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 down before the code: trigger, steps, rules, exceptions, and the point where a person decides, the human in the loop. The first of the principles set out in Ethics puts it this way: “We don't build anything until we've measured where the business is actually losing 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 set time.
Related terms
Human in the loop
The step in the workflow where a person approves, corrects or stops things. It's designed along with the others, not added afterwards.
ERP
The business 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 mimics a person's clicks in programs that can't be connected any other way.
Questions and answers
What does workflow mean?
A workflow is the sequence of steps an activity goes through from start to finish, with who does each step, in what order and by what rules.
The Workflow Management Coalition's technical definition, from 1996, describes the automation of a business process in which documents, information or tasks are passed from one participant to another according to procedural rules.
What is a business workflow?
It's a flow of work inside a business. For example: an email arrives with an order, someone checks stock availability, the salesperson confirms with the customer, the warehouse prepares the goods, admin 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's automating the flow of work: 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 to go.
Decisions stay with people where they're needed. According to Istat, about 18% of Italian businesses using artificial intelligence use it for this.
What's the difference between a workflow and a process?
A process is the set of activities that achieve a business objective, for example fulfilling an order. A workflow is the way the work in that process moves between people and systems, with its rules.
The same process can have a workflow that's entirely manual, partly automated, or almost entirely automated.
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 when a deadline approaches, a script without a model costs less and makes fewer mistakes.
Artificial intelligence is needed in the steps that require reading and interpreting: a freely written email, a document whose format changes, an enquiry 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 held 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 (in Italian), and is calculated on businesses with at least 10 employees that use artificial intelligence.
- The interruptions and 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 measurement of an Italian SME.
- The 124 days at 99.998% are a measurement by a monitoring service independent of Itria, with a check every 5 minutes, as of 5 September 2026.
The flow already exists, even if nobody's written it down. You 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. Drop us a line about what's slowing you down. We'll make the first move: we'll look at what a customer sees when they search for you, and tell you what we found. Even if we never end up working together.