For example, if you use emails to negotiate specifications with the client, by the time you're finished you're often no longer able to tell which one was supposed to be the final draft. Ideally, you'd want a system in which negotiations and state of progress are visually accessible to all involved parties, in your own company as well as the client. (besides, you want to avoid emails anyway, because they aren't reliable as corporate records.)
The below workflow was designed to provide a transparent dialog between two parties, for revising and settling specifications. By the way, SaaS workflows are convenient because you can choose to use them only during the project period.
Of course, it isn't realistic to omit emails altogether. What we CAN do is omit the redundancy of including all involved parties in an electronic mailing list and sending every single memo to every single person. Here is a sample where all parties are notified only when there is a revision to the specs.
