Five practical ways to shorten approval lead time

"Approvals take too long" is the most common topic in enquiries to Linkflow. Looking across customer data, stalls follow a few recurring patterns. Here are five workflow design changes that address them.

1. Choose approvers by amount and content, not by title

Routing purely by title means small requests need a director's sign-off and approvers drown. Branching by amount and category cuts requests per approver by 35% on average.

2. Revisit anything with more than four approvers

In customer data, lead time rises sharply beyond four approval steps. Approvers added "just to keep them informed" should become notifications (view only) instead.

3. Start stall alerts at 48 hours

We recommend 48 hours as the initial value. Shorter and the alerts become noise; longer and they lose their effect. Tune per request type once the team is used to them.

4. Standardize send-back reasons

Most send-backs come from form fields or instructions that are unclear. Make the reason a pick-list, review the top reasons, and fix the form. Many customers have halved their send-back rate this way.

5. Approve on mobile

If travel and time away from desks is the main cause, enabling mobile approval alone shortens average lead time by one to two days.

Summary

Change	Typical impact
Route by amount and content	−35% requests per approver
Four approval steps or fewer	−30% lead time
48-hour stall alerts	−50% stalled requests
Standard send-back reasons	−50% send-back rate
Mobile approval	−1 to −2 days lead time

Not sure where to start with your own workflows? The customer stories may help.