Workflow Sample: November 2015

Japanese people are fond of "life insurance".

Despite the population of approximately 100 million people, 40-50 trillion JPY money is paid for insurance every year. That calculates the total of 400,000 JPY per person a year.

There may be various reasons for being fond of insurance, such as

The risk of family will be serious when the wage-earner dies, because of mostly wives are full-time housewives. (There are fewer working-couples in Japan.)
Insurance companies also make social contributions, such as being major shareholders of companies and constructing buildings.
First of all, national characteristic is strongly savings-oriented.

Whereas, it is also in consideration of the existence of Tax incentives which is

Income tax and personal residence tax will be reduced. (Up to 240,000 JPY per year)

That is, in Japan, under the thoughts of "More people should buy insurances", there is a system that "You've got a benefit of cashback for buying insurances of up to 240,000 JPY worth. 32,000 JPY at the maximum* will come back to you!". (* In the case of income tax rate 20% and personal residence tax 10%)

Income tax refund of "up to 120,000 JPY deduction × tax rate"
Residence tax reduction of "maximum 84,000 JPY deduction × tax rate"

In fact, there are many cases that buying insurances in accordance with the "maximum amount of deduction".

However, you must make application at each year-end to receive this benefit. That is the one which is indicated as "Insurance premium deduction" among two of year-end-adjustment document to submit.

A) Application for Deduction for Insurance Premiums for Employment Income Earner and Application for Special Exemption for Spouse of Employment Income Earner for 2015
B) Application for (Change in) Exemption for Dependents of Employment Income Earner for 2016

The following Workflow is a mechanism for auto-generation of this "Application form PDF". You work hard on it once, and it will relieve you from working since the next year by data copy (Start in reusing data).

[Year-end-adjustment-Insurance premium Deduction]

There is a "seasonal tradition" in firms in Japan, so-called "Year-end Adjustment", an application for Tax deduction. Employees of a firm are required to fill "family Dependant circumstance" and "situation of personal insurance", etc. into application form, to get a refund of the difference between "amount of withholding" and "income tax to pay". 50 million wage earners in all over Japan would fill in the form document, then stamp a seal, and submit to their firm.

Incidentally, there is a rule that companies collect Income and Local tax on behalf of the government in Japan, which is referred to Tax Withholding Obligation in Income Tax Act.

Eventually, these paper documents won't be delivered to a Taxation office or the National Tax Agency. For the companies, it doesn't matter the rule of "submission in paper", as far as "correct information" could be obtained. However, they must comply with the obligation of storing data for 7 years. As a matter of course, many of the companies have the feeling of "wasting of resources, such as paper, printer, labor of transcription and postage, etc..."

Well, one of these form documents will change its format this year.

As you know at a glance, Individual Number has been added. You may recognize that this document will be upgraded to "Specific Personal Information" from "Personal Information"... (I guess I will need a secure locker...)

[Year-end-tax-adjustment:Dependent Exemption application]

"I can't see how many man-hours inside..."

"Visualization of operating costs" is an important subject in the corporate activities. Moreover, a wide variety of expression technique should be possible by the evolution of Information Processing Technology and Communication Technology of today.

"GPS logger", moving path can be seen (Move map)
"Thermography", heat distribution can be seen (Infrared thermal image)
"EVM graph", budget history can be seen (Completion transition graph)

* GPS: Global Positioning System, EVM: Earned Value Management

"Hmm, I want to visualize it somehow..."

However, on the other hand, how to collect the information of "Actual work time", which is essential data, would be the major challenge when you want to put "internal man-hours" as the theme.

[General-purpose work request - work cost]

'I want to experience "Workflow", but don't know how should try it out with which business.'

Especially, it would be worrisome if you 'want to try as an organization' rather than 'trying alone'. For example, supposing if you want to put 'Daily reporting' on Workflow to achieve paperless, it is pitiful for the testing people as they must do the both of conventional manner and Cloud manner during the test period.

The following is a "General work request flow" that is often set at the time of trial for a Workflow product.
It can be used in the operations that is not "Workflow & paperless". That is, if you brought this template into operation as a Workflow, you are able to experience that throwing various requests to the member of the company. And also people on the side that has received the request can experience that "My Tasks" are accumulated gradually to the Workflow product.

'Please create icons for the new product.'
'I'd like a review on the created material.'
'Can I ask you the data extraction from the previous ad?'

Insidentally, although this "General-purpose work request" is a workflow which has been introduced here and there, the exceelency of "General work request flow" here in this article is the indication of "Time cost" on the screen for making request.

(Even though I cannot express very well,) it makes you 'hard to ask a request' in a good sense. (You cannot make request so freely.) In other words, you will become more precise in making requests.

<Time cost> (criterion)

Officer: $100 /h
Manager: $75/h
Regular employee: $ 50/h
Part-timer: $ 25 /h

[General-purpose work request]

There are many occasions to write "Address data" in business.

Step of "Inputting mailing address of invoice" in Billing Process
Step of "Inputting answer data" in Questionnaire aggregation Process
Step of "Inputting the location where inspection was conducted" in Elevator maintenance Process

etc... Staffs in a variety of sections are inputting "address data" in their day-to-day business.

The following Workflow definition is a Business process for databasing "collected Name cards / Questionnaire paper". A large amount of business cards and questionnaires paper that have been acquired at exhibitions or events, etc. will be databased.

The inputting screen has been implemented a mechanism of automatic enumeration of candidate addresses by "partial input".

What is excellent in this Process, is that it refers "postal code data, including large offices" (about 150,000) for its refining search. That means, if you type a part of the name of a government office or a major company, all of the rest of information such as "postal code", "address", and "the name of the company", will be indicated for assisted input.

* Japan Post Co., Ltd. has assigned dedicating postal codes for each large establishment that receives massive deliveries.

In addition, when you type "otsu city hall", it will indicate