When a process only works because a particular person remembers the order of things, it isn't a process. It's a dependency. Encoding it into software is how that knowledge stops walking out the door.
The failure mode for custom workflow tools is rigidity: a system that encoded last year's process and now needs a developer every time the business adapts.
Every stage a piece of work can be in and every legal move between them, so nothing ends up in an ambiguous halfway condition.
Conditions and routing your operations team edits themselves, because the rules will change more often than the software around them.
Triggered by state change and escalated when something sits too long, rather than depending on a person to remember to chase.
Who can move work between which states, modelled explicitly, which is usually where informal processes turn out to have no controls at all.
Every transition recorded with who, when, and why. It's the record auditors ask for and informal processes can never produce.
Where work sits, how long each stage takes, and which step is the bottleneck this month rather than in theory.
These processes run fine right up until the person who understands them is on holiday, leaves, or is simply too busy that week.
Where the workflow crosses several systems, it usually needs business process automation underneath it.
Describe how the work moves through your business today, including the bits that only happen because someone remembers. We'll model it and show you the gaps.