For growing businesses, one thing has become painfully obvious in 2025: email is the absolute worst place to manage approvals. What used to feel convenient is now the number one lead time for delaying, miscommunicating, and bottlenecking operations. In approving purchase orders, vendor contracts, marketing creatives, leave requests, or budgets, teams can get trapped in the same awful email loops daily – the disorganised threads are in existence to “Reply-All”, and back to manual follow-ups in desperation.
The underlying reason? Email Approval Workflow Problems are not about people – it’s the System.
Table of Contents
Why Email-Based Approvals Fail
Email was never intended to serve as an approval system, and it is apparent by the challenges experienced daily:
- Delays at Every Turn: Approvals are buried in inboxes for hours or days. If someone is out of the office, travelling, or just busy, everyone freezes. No visibility.
- Which Version? “Please look at the attached updated document.” “No, wrong document – use that one.” “Oops, the numbers changed – attaching FINAL FINAL.xlsx.” So many versions and no one knows which version is correct.
- Missing Attachments and Multiple Threads: One person replies, but forgets to attach the document. Someone else has the document, but they replied in another thread. As a result, the information gets disbursed amongst all of the message threads, nowhere centralised.
- No Accountability: Who is responsible? Who approved? Who is the holdup? While working in email, there is absolutely no record of what has transpired, only what is assumed.
- No TAT Visibility: Email workflows equal no SLA visibility. There is no tracking of turnaround time, escalation triggers, or the ability to stop a bottleneck.
- Manual Follow-Ups Become a Full-Time Job: Teams literally spend hours chasing approvals and have little to no execution of real work.
- Siloed Communication: Finance is working in its inbox. HR has its own threads. Sales has 20 sub-threads with no intercommunication, resulting in business process issues at scale.
The Modern Fix: Approval Process Automation with BPM
To ease the burdens of email overload, businesses all over the world are transitioning from email to automation of approval processes, utilising BPM software.
When BPM tools are used, instead of approvals being in different inboxes, the approvals are assembled into workflows, centrally coordinated with stages, roles, deadlines and visibility.
Learn More: What is a BPM Software?
How SnohAI BPM Transforms Approval Workflows
SnohAI BPM replaces email loops with intelligent, centralised approval workflows. Here’s how:
| Email-Based Approvals | SnohAI BPM |
| Buried in the inbox | Central dashboard |
| No clarity on pending requests | Real-time TAT visibility |
| Manual reminders | Auto reminders + escalations |
| Version mistakes | Single source of truth |
| No accountability | Full audit trail |
| Anyone can forward | Role-based access & security |
Key Capabilities
- Drag-and-drop workflow automation.
- Role-specific approval rules.
- SLA timers and automated escalations.
- Real-time dashboards and audit histories.
- Secure document storage with version history.
- Mobile and web approvals from anywhere in the world, at anyone in the world.
SnohAI creates visibility, speed and discipline without ever requiring your users to chase anyone down manually!
Before vs After: A Real-World Approval Story
Before — Email Workflow
- Manager emails for budget approval.
- Finance replies with questions in a new thread.
- Document shared — forgot to add the attachment.
- Multiple versions sent back and forth — utter confusion!
- Approval delayed for seven days.
- Vendor payment delayed → workflow completely disrupted.
After — SnohAI BPM
- Manages budget approval requests in SnohAI.
- Document uploaded, with version history.
- Workflow auto-routes to finance → then accounts → then director.
- SLA timer automatically sends reminders or escalates if delayed.
- Final approval is completed in twenty-four hours.
- Audit trail automatically logged.
Result: More work completed and less time wasted.
Final Thoughts
Email is a great way to communicate — but a bad way to approve. In 2025, the fastest-moving companies are the ones that are moving away from inbox-based workflows and using automation.
We need to stop operating in disconnected threads and start running processes from a single, visible, and measurable approval system.
FAQs
Why is email a bad tool for managing approvals?
Email was not designed to support structured processes. There is no TAT, no accountability, no escalation, and documents get lost in long email threads, causing delays and confusion.
What are the biggest issues with email approval workflows?
Version confusion, missed attachments, slow replies, no audit trail, and the need for manual follow-up take up significant time and slow down the decision process.
How does BPM software solve approval challenges?
BPM centralises requests, documents, roles, and timelines in a single tool. Everything is trackable, automated, and inbox chaos is a thing of the past.
What is approval process automation?
It is a digital workflow where approval requests move automatically based on a predictable workflow, with reminders, escalations, and dashboards.
How does SnohAI BPM help?
SnohAI automates and tracks every approval request with dashboards, featuring SLA timers for accountability, document version control, role-based access, and a full audit history. All of which speeds up approvals and lessens errors.