Manufacturer of nitrogen laser cutting in Xiamen, China
The so-called process is just to use the wisdom of everyone to figure out how to do a thing, and then fix the method of doing things, and then everyone will follow this optimal method to operate. Manufacturer of nitrogen laser cutting in Xiamen, China
01
A second generation of an enterprise, after several years of experience at the grassroots level, has gradually begun to take over the company in an all-round way.
During the grass-roots experience, he found a very prominent problem, that is, employees are unwilling to travel, which leads to the lack of timely connection with customers, whether it is the market information in the early stage or the quality of service in the later stage. , It has brought a certain negative impact on the company’s reputation and benefits.
Why do not want to travel, that is difficult to reimburse. It is possible for employees to come back from a business trip for reimbursement, as short as a week or as long as a month.
Therefore, he chose to help employees solve the difficult problem of reimbursement, hoping that by solving this practical difficulty of employees, the company can show a new look and at the same time strengthen the company’s market relationship.
After improvement, although the reimbursement cycle has been slightly shortened in the past few months, it is still far from everyone’s expectations. He found that the company obviously has an online approval process, but the financial work method is old-fashioned, and approval leaders at all levels are still required to sign on the invoices. Manufacturer of nitrogen laser cutting in Xiamen, China
Anyone who has asked the leader to sign knows that the leader is usually very busy, and it is very common to find that he is not in the office three or four times. If the leader is on a business trip, it is not surprising to wait for ten days and half a month.
So he ordered to cancel the offline signing, as long as the online approval process passed, but the online approval was still relatively slow, and many leaders still delayed for several days without signing.
For this reason, he also requested that the approval process for reimbursement should not exceed 24 hours, otherwise he would be assessed. But this time his order is not easy to use, because the reviewers at all levels have their own valid reasons for delaying. The financial staff said that there are always a few days every month when you are busy with billing and billing, and you can’t finish the overtime work. How can you have time to review and reimburse you? Drink, I’m groggy when I get back to the hotel. It’s good to be able to handle other business processes. Let’s talk about the reimbursement of these hours when I come back. So, the matter stays there.
02 This is a typical process problem
The nodes of the whole process: reimbursement initiator→department leader review→accounting review→financial director review→general manager approval→casher executes payment. At first glance, there are not many problems, and it is similar to the reimbursement process of most companies. Manufacturer of nitrogen laser cutting in Xiamen, China
First analyze this question:
Who is the client for this process? In other words, who is this process for? “
“Yes, the customer of the process is the reimburser, so when we design the process, we must fully consider the needs of the customer. What are the demands of the reimburser?”
“Get reimbursement immediately!”
“Why can’t I get the reimbursement immediately?”
“The leadership approval time is too long.”
This process requires 4 people to approve, department leaders, accountants, financial directors, and general managers. Do you think it is really necessary? “
In fact, only this accountant needs to be audited, and no one else is necessary. It is actually very simple to judge whether it is necessary. Just think about what the leaders on each node review.
“The department manager is mainly to determine the authenticity of the employee’s business trip.”
Reimbursement must go through the general manager, and the main consideration is to control risks. ” Manufacturer of nitrogen laser cutting in Xiamen, China
In fact, asking the general manager to review is just to let the leaders share the responsibility. In case something goes wrong in the future, we can say that this is not approved by the general manager, but this does not help the risk itself at all. It is impossible to spend energy on this kind of thing. In fact, this process only needs to be audited by the accountant. If the chief financial officer thinks it is necessary to review and pass another pass, then he can keep it, but other leaders do not need approval at all, and the general manager and business department leaders are often the most difficult to find. , You dragged these unnecessary and hard-to-find leaders into the process for review, which is the root cause of the slow reimbursement.
“Then what if an employee maliciously reimburses and runs away?”
“We can further refine and improve our process to avoid risks. For example, we can set a quota, whether it is 3,000 or 5,000. You can set it according to the actual situation. If you exceed this quota, the process will become approval before payment. , you can pay directly if you don’t exceed the limit.”
“Then what if the reimbursement is made in multiple installments, if you submit it 10 times in one day, tens of thousands of dollars will go out directly.” Another person asked.
“That’s not easy. It’s enough to stipulate the daily reimbursement frequency. You can only be reimbursed once a week without approval. If it exceeds, you must first approve it.”
The process framework is clearly sorted out, and the finalized process is as follows: Submit by the reimburser → pay by the cashier → check by the accountant → review by the chief financial officer. Then, in order to control risks, the chief financial officer decided that 100% of the audit should still be done in the early stage, but because it was changed to an after-the-fact audit, employees can still get reimbursement immediately. At the same time, the reimbursement process is required to be associated with the business trip process to avoid false reporting of authenticity, and the single amount is controlled within 5,000 to avoid the risk of false reporting of the amount. Manufacturer of nitrogen laser cutting in Xiamen, China
This problem that has troubled him for a long time has been properly resolved through such a simple process optimization.
03Why do our processes always fail?
In many companies, it is found that the grassroots employees are annoyed when they hear the process, and even want to scold others, thinking that it is a bunch of people who do not work, and they specially create a set of things to embarrass those who work hard, so as to reflect their own value.
On the management side, it is always easy to hear another kind of rhetoric, that employees are not capable and qualified, and they always like to operate in violation of procedures, which leads to two layers of management in the company, and the management ability and efficiency of the enterprise have not been improved.
There are three most common reasons for this problem:
Servers who don’t understand the process
01
Too many companies always pay attention to what the leaders want in the process of process design, mistakenly regard the leaders as service objects, but ignore what the real users of the process (front-line business personnel) want.
This has led to many processes being designed and found that the leaders are very satisfied, but the operation of the front-line business personnel is very complicated, and the sales staff finally get the business. After a bunch of internal processes are reviewed, the customers can’t wait to run away. .
Therefore, at the beginning of the process design, we must fully consider the users of the process, what exactly they need, and plan around their needs. Manufacturer of nitrogen laser cutting in Xiamen, China
Rely on increased human approval to control risk
02
To a large extent, the process is to make the business compliant and control enterprise risks. Of course, there is nothing wrong with it, but how to control risks depends on the choice of method.
To give a very simple example, it is the procurement pricing process. The company is worried that the purchase price will be high due to rebates, so every time the price is set, it must be reviewed by the cost accountant. After receiving the quotation, the cost accountant will calculate and give a final opinion. , often requires multiple rounds of negotiation, and the process back and forth.
But just imagine, is it possible to advance the work of cost accounting, calculate a standard cost price based on market conditions before purchasing and pricing, as long as the price negotiated by the purchasing is within a certain deviation range of the standard cost, it will be approved, and then the approval process will follow Can the process of wrangling in the media be avoided?
Therefore, in the process design process, for each additional approval node, you must ask what needs to be reviewed at this node, and whether it can be replaced by process requirements.
The best way to control risks is often not to increase the approval nodes of leaders, but to integrate normative requirements into the process of business processes to form standard input and output, which naturally controls risks and reduces the process of back and forth. Manufacturer of nitrogen laser cutting in Xiamen, China
Attempt to set in stone once and for all
03
A very subtle example, the company’s process is like the clothes that people wear, and should change with the changes of the internal and external environment of the company. The market environment has changed, just like a person will catch a cold if he still wears a T-shirt from summer to winter; the internal scale has increased, just like a child who grows up and can no longer wear children’s clothes.
It is unrealistic for many enterprises to try to solve all problems once and for all through one reform and one consultation.
Therefore, when more and more employees start to dislike the process, we need to re-examine the applicability of the process.
write at the end
The process sounds high-level, but it is not complicated at all, because whether there is a process or not, things always have to be done.
The so-called process is just to use the wisdom of everyone to figure out how to do a thing, and then fix the method of doing things, and then everyone will follow this optimal method to operate.
As long as the above three questions can be fully considered during the process design, the final designed process will definitely not deviate. Manufacturer of nitrogen laser cutting in Xiamen, China