Workflow Sample

Want to automate "Prorated billing".

Rent, Water charge, Cloud service... In any field, "invoicing process" is a very important business. No mistake is allowed. Even though a human would do the credit investigation and address input, I want to let a computer do the calculation of "prorating".

Indeed, a computer is a machine.
It makes no mistake.
And it is fast.

But on the other hand, it also has stupidity such as, one third multiplied by three equals "0.999". There is not much difference about this aspect between a calculator and a supercomputer. (Oh, I hear voices of objection from users of J programming language, etc.)

In the following Workflow, prorating calculation for "a service which monthly fee is 10,000 JPY" is automated.

It is a simple sample flow that, inputting information of "used X days in month MM of year YYYY", then automated until "generating of invoice PDF".

In this example, as obvious on the flow chart, even an "Approval Step" or a "Send-back Step" is not arranged for the sake of simplicity. A very plane Business Process. Therefore, it is useful as a base for the development of applied system, such as "printing out automatically" or "automatically transmit email with attachment".

[Invoice Issuance flow]

I wonder how many characters a Japanese person can read and write.

We have 48 pairs of "hiragana" and "katakana" (syllabaries), but the number of "kanji" (logographic) is counted to approximately 10 thousand. It is also said 30 thousand including characters that are not used in day-to-day life. Japanese people can describe any species of fish in one character. Our feeling for "limitation of 140 characters" of Twitter is greatly different from western people. (They say Chinese has 80 thousand.)

And in Japan, a lot of time is devoted to "learning kanji" in school education.

Almost Japanese kids would become able to read and write approx. 10 thousand characters through 6 years of elementary school. Then they learn another 10 thousand in 3 years of junior high school, and in high school and college or university, they encounter more complicated kanji. Eventually, general member of society is said to be able to effortlessly read about 3000 kinds of kanji. ( Even I probably am able to WRITE kanji barely 10 thousand of them, honestly.)

Although people who were born and raised in Japan would not care, this kind of story goes down well for European language speakers.

Well, such Japanese people have been struggling with "Computer processing for Japanese language" in various ways.

Not only the disadvantage of "too many characters", we encountered troubles from various causes, such as, "no word separator (space)", or "Several readings for the same character", or "Many characters in different meaning exist for the same reading", or even "the shape of the same character varies according to vertical or horizontal writing."

The following Workflow is for testing of the outputs to PDF.

Even though more than 10 thousand characters are designed in Fonts in Japanese, there are possibilities of occurrences of trouble that "particular character does not exist in the Font" upon embedding business data onto [Template PDF] automatically at a Step in the middle of Workflow. This is a Testing Flow to detect such a trouble in advance. The most important point is whether "Font data" has been embedded in the [PDF Template] file or not.

[PDF generation test]

It is easy to promote "Improvement project" if the "Originating source" was outside the organization.

(a) Internal trigger
(b) External trigger

After all, business operations by (a)Internal triggers are "Workflow that is closed to in-house".

For a Leave Request flow that starts from "an employee" or Decision-making Request flow, which starts from a "subordinate", for example, Workflow administrators unintentionally tend to be in a mood that "It doesn't need to be in a hurry for revising", or "It might be managed somehow in the actual operation".

Whereas, for operations by (b) External triggers, they won't be so.

For example, Brochure Shipping flow, which is started by a request from a customer, or Procurement-Settlement flow that is started by billing from a supplier... These will be directly linked to the company's reputation. In other words, a motivation such as "Want to improve the Process to complete operations faster without mistake" is naturally shared within the members.

The Workflow below, is a Payment Confirmation flow for "Event participation fee".

The Process transmits "Receipt PDF" automatically via email when the secretariat confirms the payment via credit card or bank transfer from participants.

You see an enthusiasm like

Want to convey "Thank you for joining" as soon as possible,
Want to confirm remittance (payment) without any oversight.

[Payment Confirmation flow]

I want to see the "Work regulations" of the company!

5 years of service, how many "Paid leave" do I have?
By the way, what are the words describing "Prohibition of moonlighting"?
What does the work rule say about new "Teleworking"?

There are a variety of motives and timings at which workers want to read "work regulations" again. However, in reality, it might not be in the state that immediately referable at the time when an employee wanted to see(You shouldn't openly say so, or "Labor Standards Inspection Office" will find you.)

The printed material at hand is not likely the latest version.
Did I have one of those materials?
I don't know where the latest version is...

The following Workflow is a Business Processes which are related to "creation" and "dissemination" of the company regulations.

All of the company regulations are revised in accordance with this Workflow. Automatically (and inevitably), all of the regulation files are recorded. (You can also see which regulations have been revised and which regulations have been abolished.)

After all, employees can see "the latest version of the company regulations" in the online at any time. Such devising as, for example, embedding a link in the Operating screen of "Time and attendance reporting process" would also be good.

[Company Regulations Creation]

[Company Regulations Dissemination]

The Process itself, related to company regulation, is very simple. The Department in charge (would be mostly Affairs Department) create a draft of the company regulations, the officer in charge check it, the Board of Directors approve it, and then an announcement to the entire company to be made.

However, what is excellent in this sample is that intentionally separated into two Business Processes. That is, the actual operation is on assumption of;

Regarding the "Dissemination flow", [Data viewing authorization] is given to all employees, but
Regarding the "Creation flow", [Data viewing authorization] is given to only officers, etc.

In the Deliberation Step on "Creation flow", for example, officers can write freely based on the principle of exclusive. In addition, the risks of misunderstandings and false recognition of data viewers will be lowered by the setting as not be viewed "the phantom in-house regulations" which is the revision itself had aborted at the process of the deliberations.

[Company Regulations Creation:"1. Draft Registration" screen]

[Company Regulations Creation: Data Items list]

[Company Regulations Dissemination: Data Items list]

[Free Download]

Business Template:

Revision Control of Internal Documents on Workflow (2014-01-14)
Draw a Court Process in BPMN (flow of Civil Litigation) (2015-08-17)
Business Manual within Workflow! (2013-10-07)

<<Related Articles>>

[Japanese Entry (和文記事)]

Want to use "illustrations" and "four-panel cartoon" more frequently.

If you take advantage of the illustrations and cartoons for, such as web sites, flyers, proposal documents, etc., it would be able to convey the information intuitively. Sometimes, "one panel of illustration" could convey a lot of information than "100 lines of texts". (Seeing is believing?) In fact, illustrations and cartoons have come to be widely used also in the business for reducing the "communication loss", such as in company brochures and corporate websites. (Especially, Japan where originating the cartoon culture to all over the world, abounds with talented human resources for cartoon.)

"Cartoons" and "Four panel comics" are created, in some cases being outsourced to companies or freelancers, in other cases, by cartoonists who are directly hired in the Marketing section of an enterprise. (This business operation would also be suitable for teleworking.)

If you hire a cartoonist in your company, you should standardize the Business Process.

The following Workflow is cartoon creating flow.

When you record the deliverables according to the standard process (That is, refraining the exchange of emails), you will be able to prevent delay of delivery time as an organization, also will be able to take advantage of the past data as a team. As long as you can supply "original scenario", production process itself becomes possible to mass-produce at a cost sense of the order of 1 page 10,000-20,000 JPY. (It will be affected by its quality and motivation, of course.)

* As a matter of course, it can be also diverted to a variety of creation-based flow other than cartoons.

[Cartoon Creation flow]

In the first place, what is "Deputy"?

Speaking "Deputy-approval" in a word, it has the following four forms in the terms of process designing. (Furthermore, there is a concept of "Partial appointment" in addition to these, which I do not cover here.)

A. Deputy department manager is able to grant approvals on behalf of the Manager, at any time.
B1. Deputy department manager is able to grant approvals on behalf of when the Manager was absent.
B2. Deputy department manager is able to grant approvals on behalf of when the Manager was in accident.
B3. Deputy department manager is able to grant approvals on behalf of when the Manager was vacancy.

If you are familiar to the server system, it would be also good to design a workflow by comparison with the notion of "redundancy". In other words, it is a designing on the idea that the system functions will not be compromised by the failure in part of the system configuration equipment. (Even "Malfunction" in Department manager, Deputy is still able...)

A. (Hot standby) Deputy department manager is capable of granting approval at a anytime.
B. (Cold standby) Deputy department manager is capable of granting approval only when the manager was impossible.

The following Decision-making flow represents a complex Business Process which alters the deputization rule according to the money amount upon projects.

a. Deputy-approval of A (Hot) is permitted if the cost amount was lower than 1 million JPY.
b. Deputy-approval of B1, B2, B3 (Cold) is permitted if the cost amount was in between 1 to 5 million JPY.
c. Only the manager is allowed to grant approval on Issues with more than 5 million JPY cost.

[Approval Request-Deputy-approval]

"Personnel evaluation" is unavoidable for a company organization .

However, "Personnel evaluation process" varies depending on each company. The "Evaluation axis", such as for example;

Emphasizing on Outputs?
Emphasizing on personal skills?

is an issue concerning with self identity of each company. In other words "Examples of other companies" cannot be nearly as a reference.

[Self outcome] Has outputted sufficient quality and quantity outcomes in accordance with internal rules.
[Organizational efficiency] Proposed a better internal rules, so that to contribute to the improvement of the internal rules.
[Self-ability] Always absorbing the latest knowledge related to information technology and social system.
[Contribution to others] Originating the latest knowledge on the information technology and social system to in-house.

Moreover, "the basic way of thinking" may differ by companies, i.e.

Absolute evaluation
Comparative evaluation
Absolute evaluation on primary evaluation, comparative evaluation on secondary

Also, the "frequency of evaluation implementation and the mechanism of reflecting on reward", will greatly vary depending on company size and business content.

Implementation of once a year
Implementation of once in every 3 month
Monthly implementation

The following Workflow is an example of personnel evaluation to be implemented monthly. An employee conducts self-evaluation (relative evaluation) for each of the evaluation axis with 0 to 5 points. In response to it, a director and an officer conducts evaluation on all personnel (relative evaluation).

[Personnel Evaluation process]

In this example, it is excellent that "Total score in consideration of the weighting of each evaluation axis" will be indicated automatically in the moment when evaluation values of 0 to 5 points for each of the evaluation axis are entered.

It can be said that "Monthly report" added with simple evaluation. (* The weighting here is "Self outcome: 8, Organizational efficiency:6, Self-ability: 4, Contribution to others: 2.)

Incidentally, it might sound rather cumbersome that conducting evaluation for the personnel, director and officer each and every month. However, diligent quantification in every month could become an opportunity to brush up on "How to evaluate?" or "How to be evaluated?". If "reflecting in remuneration" was reviewed only once a year, it may be good for discussing on looking back on 12 months of the evaluated value that was recorded by everyone, month after month.

[Personnel Evaluation process:"1. Enter Self-evaluation" screen]