Hi there.
you can do a lot of workflow without any tools or SharePoint.
You just need to understand your workflow and setup your form to handle it.
Typically there are two keys.
Tracking the user and then the form state.
I would recommend an Active Directory Web Service like Qdabra offers.
This way you can identify each form user and validate them and then pull their email, location, department, manager etc from their AD info.
Then add fields to your form which track the state of the form, such as pending, approved, rejected etc.
Then as the form is submitted, etc update these fields with the correct status.