Key Point
- Ashi-Ashi Works had digitized its Approval Application Process
- The accounting manager, general affairs manager, and executive vice president were noticeably slow to respond, causing delays in the process
- By setting deadlines for each process, they were able to prevent delays
- The accounting manager, general affairs manager, and executive vice president’s sense of responsibility also increased
1．Issue: Delays at parallel review steps
Ashi-Ashi Works is a BPO (Business Process Outsourcing) company. The company has implemented a business process management system and is operating a workflow system for approval requests.
As an improvement to the Approval Application workflow, a greater degree of efficiency was achieved by making it possible to simultaneously process the Comments step, in which the accounting manager, general manager, and executive vice president write their comments after approval by the applicant and supervisor, thereby reducing the time it took to reach the president’s decision in the final step.
However, recently, due to busy schedules or forgetting to process a transaction, the input of either the accounting manager, the general manager, or the executive vice president may be delayed. The advantage of parallelization is that multiple steps can proceed simultaneously, but the process will not proceed to the president’s decision step until all three have been dealt with. Therefore, the lead time target of three business days or fewer is exceeded in an increasing number of cases.
2．Solution: Set a deadline for the comments step
The president of the company, who is the final decision maker, instructed the process owner that the task of entering comments and findings is not an act of approval or rejection, but rather about entering opinions and advice, and if not processed within one business day, it can be considered that there are no findings.
The process owner reorganizes the flow so that a deadline is automatically set for the comment input task and the task moves to the next step after one business day has passed.
Additionally, if the deadline has passed, the data item for entering findings will automatically be filled in with “No findings (expired)”.
Before
View workflow diagram details
- 1. Application
- 2-1. First approval
- The supervisor fills in the required information and submits the application.
- 3-a. Comments (General Affairs)
- The General Affairs Manager will enter their comments.
- 3-b. Comments (Accounting)
- The Accounting Manager enters their comments.
- 3-c. Comments (Executive Vice President)
- The Executive Vice President enters their comments.
- 4. Approval
- The President makes the decision.
After
View workflow diagram details
- 1. Application
- 2-1. First approval
- The supervisor fills in the required information and submits the application.
- 3-a. Comments (General Affairs)
- The General Affairs Manager will enter their comments.
- After 24 hours, the item will automatically move to the next step as it has expired
- 3-b. Comments (Accounting)
- TheAccounting Manager will enter their comments.
- After 24 hours, the item will automatically move to the next step as it has expired
- 3-c. Comments (Executive Vice President) *Only for amounts under 1 million yen
- The Executive Vice President enters their comments.
- After 24 hours, the item will automatically move to the next step as it has expired
- 4. Approval
- The President makes the decision.
Compare Before/After
3．Effects
- Maintaining target lead times for review applications
- By setting deadlines and automatically transitioning to the next step when a deadline expires, process delays are prevented. This is expected to improve the efficiency of business processes and increase the speed of the entire business.
- Increased sense of responsibility among department heads
- By clearly stating that no findings have been made if the deadline is not met, the accounting manager, general affairs manager, and executive vice president will feel a stronger sense of responsibility for their roles.