Workflow Sample

To get the approval by the "Boss", and furthermore to get the approval by "Boss of the Boss".
I have introduced you the method of two-step approval in "How to Design a Workflow Chart of decision making by the Boss and Their Boss". An approval flow that is probable also other than decision making. This time, I would like to introduce you another way of drawing on the Business flow of the last week.

In the Workflow chart below, the second Swimlane is set "Boss of the Requester" (relative specification), not "Manager" (absolute specification by the positions).
By this setting, the Task of [2. Approval] will be allocated to the Boss of the organization that the Requester belongs. That is, in a Organization of "two Directors (officer), ten Managers, fifty Members", if "a Member" requests for approval, a Manager will approve it. If a Manager requests for approval, a Director will approve it.

[Approval flow (relative representation)]

One President, two Directors (officer), ten Managers, fifty members. It is indeed probable organizational structure.

Suppose ten person among these 'fifty members' have been assigned directly under the Directors. Specifically, suppose an Organization of

People who belong directly to the Departmentｓ that two Directors supervise each, is "2 times 5".
People who belong to 'Team' that Ten Managers supervise, is "10 times 4".

A 'Team' itself belongs to a Department, of course. More specifically, a case that some Teams are affiliated to the Sales Department, and the Sales Director itself leads directly five members on administration work, and some Teams are affiliated to the Manufacturing Department, and the Manufacturing Director itself leads directly five members on quality control work.

Characteristic of this organizational structure is that it has a "scatter in depth." It is really probable.
Well, in such case of "Organization with a variation in depth", how should the Approval Request flow be described in Workflow chart? We would like to think of how to write in accordance with international standard notation BPMN. The most controversial point is how to describe the in-house rule that "as a general rule, with the approval by Manager, Director will make the final decision". That is, there is no Manager for the "2 times 5" in this Organization.

[Approval flow (absolute representation 1)]

Sales activities are what "The source of earning" of a company.

Those Sales activities are simply categorized into sales against (a) "new customer" and (b) "sales against existing customer". Sales activity for (a) is sometimes called "walk-in sales" or "Cold calling and visit", and also sales activity for (b) is sometimes called "route sales".

The following Workflow chart represents daily business reports for "route sales". The important point is, it is in serial report type, not in daily report type. This can be used by in a wide variety of industries such as building materials, food and beverage products, temporary staffing services.
After the visit, "the salesperson" inputs the visit record mostly with a Smartphone. That is, to select visited company name, and to record about 'products that is inquired about (occurrence of a topic)' or 'product that requested a quote (occurrence of opportunity)', etc.. If the most of sales member have a "habit to report immediately after the visit", naturally the number of visits will be visualized in real time. Speaking in supervisor's point of view, performance status of marketing strategy (the situation of the fight) will be able to understand in detail. By analyzing the visit record and contracts record occasionally, the ideal situation about staffing and a new sales strategy, would also come into view.

[Route Sales Report flow]

There are many types of "off".
What is "Vacation"?
What is "Leave"?

Request for "leave" is an important application that concerns to salary, but in the other hand it is troublesome that you have to read-back "the work rules" or to look for the format of the "application". You want to make it smoother.

The following Workflow is "Leave Request flow" which can be used by a lot of companies.
You do not have to care such as "difference between annual leave and special leave" or "difference between compensatory day off and Substitute holiday". Except the "obvious holidays" like Saturday and Sunday, you can freely request for leave of vacation. Furthermore, every time you see the screen of application, you can learn that "Oh yeah, I can also make request from here when I request parental leave".

[Leave Request flow]

"Blank Emails" are still in active service.
Even today, they use it for various occasions such as "mail membership recruitment", "application of the gift campaign" or "Issuing coupon". In a peculiar case, they use it for "notification of out of paper of the MFP" in some companies

The following is a simple business process of "a Workflow starts with email receiving". You can manage a series of work after receiving an email in status. It may be applied to various businesses with a small enhancement.
In this sample, a flow of the followings is defined; (1), auto replying a thank you email, (2), qualifying the applicant, (3), registering the applicant to the list. As a matter of course, it is also good to describe an HTML to induce to the registration site.

[Email Registration flow]

BYOD stands for Bring Your Own Device. That is to utilize privately owned Smartphone and the like for "day-to-day operations".

Although it varies by the surveys, in Japan today, about 20% of companies "permit", 30% "prohibit", and the rest "abandon" BYOD. Also in United States, 80% of the companies "permit", and less than 10% "prohibit".

It is absurd that using own Smartphone "totally private only" nowadays. Sometimes you might catch an incoming "call" from the company to your private Smartphone. Then you ought to be allowed "mail checking" while on business trip or in transport. In my own opinion, to start with 'reading and writing email (Webmail)', 'checking the schedule', and 'processing tasks through the Workflow (especially on draft-approval)' should be allowed. Workers want it as well.

In the first place, in this "age of cloud", work style is changing rapidly, today. At this moment, the world economy has been sluggish, so we the human race must work harder. A radical revision of the business ought to be carried out more often though the policy settings to suit the business type × industries × scale is required. The world's GDP will be certainly improved, if they aggressively permit for example, 'working during move' or 'working at own home'.

Anyway, you should avoid 'ambiguous BYOD' (leaving as is). It will be ended up with increasing of 'secretly act' which you don't know whether it is iniquity or not, such as forwarding company business mails, or duplicating business data to USB memory or to Dropbox and so on. Rather, you should let "right thing to do" to be known, and let it penetrate as a rule.

[BYOD Application flow]

A Ringi document is one of the documents to be circulated.
Anyone who is a Japanese businessman knows it. Whereas "minutes" is created as a record of the decision-making on the meeting, "Ringi document" is a record of decision-making using a circulated document which is circulated to everyone who is concerned, is completed with name seal (stamp) of everyone and the approver. Both of these documents will be stored for a long time.

Ringi is a unique system of "name seal-intensive Japanese".
Despite it doesn't exist in countries other than Japan still is present in almost all of the Japanese company. What to say, it's like sticking on to shakkan-ho (a Japanese unit system that was used in the 19th century), instead of the metric system. But for the time being it is not likely to eliminate. It would indeed have been met Japanese ethnicity that involving a large number of participants before the person with authority to approve.
Even today, there are strong demands such as "want to indicate something like a seal" or "want it looks just like paper", despite they have implemented the Workflow system and digitized. (In terms of aggregation listing and data processing, it is extremely nonsense...)

The following Workflow example is a Ringi flow that "prevention of retaining a large number of Ringi documents" has been built-in. It will help the managers who must give approvals on between 100 to 200 of Ringi documents monthly.

[Ringi flow (Proxy Approval)]