Workflow Sample

We considered optimizing registration of substitute holidays with "The Bottleneck of Employees Working on Holidays Must Be Making Them Submit Requests Beforehand." But let's think about this a little more.

The below sample is for a company that holds a meeting to decide which employee will work on what holiday. The task for registering substitute holidays is automatically sent to each employee on the 25th of each month, so that he/she can send it in for the following month.

Japan's Labor Standards Act requires many companies to have a workflow for registering substitute holidays. This is for when an employee wishes to come into the office on a holiday, because if he/she does just that (i.e., works on a holiday), that day's payment must be increased by 35%. In order to keep payment to the usual rate, companies must have the employee set a substitute holiday in advance.

That said, HR management may be one of the least motivational office workflows for employees. They are often neglected and delayed. This could be improved. At least we could stop using a conventional paper-and-stamp system.

In Japan people spend the first three days of the year with their family and relatives. Questetra, too, closes its office from December 29 to January 3.
Many may say they don't feel like thinking about business processes during the New Year holidays, but they can't stop us; we're going to post again today anyway. (With a simple improvement sample, however.)

Yesterday's sample in "General Affairs Can Be in Charge of Replying to New Years Cards" is a workflow for widely collecting information from employees. Let's think of how we can improve it.

Happy New Year!
This year we hope to continue offering instantly-useful workflows, and we look forward to your requests and feedback.

In Japan today, there are probably a lot of people reading through their pile of received New Years cards. Even in the age of email, they say 120 million Japanese send a total of 3 billion New Years cards, to old college friends, colleagues, clients, and everyone in between. And if you get one from someone you didn't send one to, you promptly send one back in return.

The below sample is for a company that systemizes its business-related New Years cards. General Affairs is in charge of sending reply New Years cards with the company name.

Yesterday we provided a sample workflow for requesting purchases in "Handling Purchase Requests for Office Supplies."
Naturally, now we'll want a workflow for managing delivered products and acceptance testing. Let's connect this "Acceptance Testing" workflow with our "Purchase Request" workflow. (Of course, these could be managed in a separate system.)

We'd like to mention the importance of allowing everyone to see all pending purchase requests. This means that when someone notices the office has run out of toner cartridges, he/she can find out if anyone has already made a request for purchase.

Purchase requests are workflows that happen a lot in an organization, and that should be controlled with an eye on total expenses.

The first step is to cut back on small expenses, and for this centralization of procurement and strengthening negotiation skills is something that should be developed. (These are basic principles of Supplier Relationship Management.)
Each department should make purchase requests by inputting the desired quantity in a list of products. The below sample assumes a broad range of purchasable items, from office supplies (paper, toner cartridges), to software licenses and marketing tools (fliers, catalogs).

We talked about applying for reimbursement of expenses in the "Application Forms for Reimbursement of Expenses Should be Unequivocally Understandable" article.

Today let's try to stand in the average employee's shoes. When you make this type of application, you'll probably want to know whether it goes through or not. So let's add an automatic email that is sent the moment the application is approved.