Product Proposal Workflows

Proposals are routed through a workflow to either approvers or observers. The link available from the Worklist directs the user to add users with the correct privileges as approver or observer.

The search results available are filtered to only return users with the correct privileges according to observer or approver. Approvers require the manage privilege and observers require the review or manage privilege.

The workflow statuses can include:

  • Pending

  • Submitted

  • Approved

Note: While a concept and its corresponding proposal belong together, they don't have to share the same approval workflow, and each may be approved independent of the other.

Approval Statuses

The status of a proposal changes from Submitted to Approved only when all the assigned approvers have agreed on the proposal. A proposal in the Submitted or Approved status can't be edited. But if you reject a proposal it reverts to the Draft status, and you can edit it. If the latest version of a proposal submitted for approval isn't approved, then you can't submit the proposal.

Also, remember that you can't delete approved proposals. Once approved, the proposal becomes a record of the business justification for cost, revenue and resource justification. Once approved, a user generates a new revision to collect the actual cost, resource, revenue data and measure against the original estimate or justification.

You can also save the approved proposals or make a copy using the Save As or Save As New Version features and can serve as records of funding for audit. You can store funding requests or projected costs (Costs tab) for product development along with the actual funds used (actual costs).

Note: While a proposal and its corresponding concept belong together, they don't have to share the same approval workflow, and each may be approved independent of the other.
Note: Avoid self-approving any Innovation Management object as this can result in stuck workflows. Remember that the workflow only gets stuck if self-approval isn't allowed, which can be changed in the BPM taskflow setup.