3.4. Approval

The approval process is straightforward in theory: whoever is responsible signs off. In practice, this phase is one of the most common sources of delays, risk exposure, and transparency failures — not because people are not doing their jobs, but because the process itself is poorly designed.

When every contract follows the same approval path, two things happen. Low-value, straightforward contracts sit in an approval queue longer than necessary. High-risk, complex contracts move through just as quickly — because approvers see the queue is long and do not give every document equal attention. A uniform process does not produce uniform control.

Dynamic Routing Based on Contract Characteristics

Fluenta One's approval engine determines who needs to approve based on the specific attributes of each contract. This logic is built on the organization's Delegation of Authority matrix, which the system digitizes and enforces automatically.

A €50,000 contract involving personal data
CISO + Legal team · CFO
A €1 million standard commodity procurement
CFO + Category manager · CISO

Approvers see only the contracts that fall within their remit. This produces two outcomes:

1
Approvers receive a smaller volume of material, but one that is genuinely relevant to them — which improves the quality of their review.
2
Contracts reach the appropriate approvers in parallel — which shortens the overall cycle time.

Parallel and Sequential Approval

Not every approver needs to wait for another. Fluenta One handles both logics:

Parallel

When HR, IT, and the legal team are each reviewing a contract from independent perspectives, all three can receive it simultaneously and conduct their reviews in parallel.

Sequential

Where one approval is a prerequisite for another — for instance, where legal sign-off must precede the CFO's decision — the system enforces a sequential order.

The configurable logic ensures that the process reflects the organization's actual decision-making structure, not the other way around.

Automatic Escalation and Delegation

The most common bottleneck in any approval process is a delayed approver — not deliberate obstruction, but an overloaded inbox and a missed notification.

Automatic escalation
If an approval has not been completed within a defined number of days, the system automatically notifies the next level or the approver's manager — without human intervention.
Delegation and substitution
If an approver is on leave, they can designate a substitute for a specific period in advance. The substitute receives the task immediately — the process does not stall.