SAP Business Workflow can be used to define business processes that are not yet mapped in the R/3 System. These may be simple release or approval procedures, or more complex business processes such as creating a material master and the associated coordination of the departments involved. SAP Business Workflow is particularly suitable for situations in which work processes have to be run through repeatedly, or situations in which the business process requires the involvement of a large number of agents in a specific sequence.

You can also use SAP Business Workflow to respond to errors and exceptions in other, existing business processes. You can start a workflow when predefined events occur, for example an event can be triggered if particular errors are found during an automatic check.

SAP Business Workflow uses the existing transactions and functions of the R/3 System and does not change the functions. You can combine the existing functions of the R/3 System to form new business processes with SAP Business Workflow. The workflow system takes over control of the business processes. If you are already using SAP Organizational Management, you can use the organizational structure created there to have the relevant agents carry out the individual activities. It is possible to have an activity carried out by a position. This ensures that the respective occupiers of the position can carry out the individual activities during execution of the workflow. This means that personnel changes in your organization are taken into account immediately in the execution of a workflow.

SAP Business Workflow provides a number of tools for defining and analyzing workflows as well as for monitoring operation.

The Workflow Builder is for displaying and making changes to workflows. You can make small extensions directly to the original workflows supplied by SAP, such as carrying out your own agent assignments or changing deadline monitoring.

There are several Workflow Wizards to support you in the definition of workflows, with which you can create specific parts of a workflow. The Workflow Wizard Explorer gives you an overview of the existing Workflow Wizards.

In order to make the functions of the R/3 Systems available to a workflow, you use business objects, which you can define and analyze in the Business Object Builder. These business objects are made available to the workflow in reusable tasks. The Business Wizard Explorer gives you an overview of all existing tasks.

The end user receives information about the activities they are to carry out in their Business Workplace. This provides them with a central overview of all the activities that they are authorized to carry out. They can commence the activities from here.

Several tools are available to the workflow system administrator, with which they can control and analyze the current workflows. The workflow system administrator is notified of problems automatically by the system.