Experienced executives and managers that look within their business can readily identify handfuls of business processes that either sit outside the existing fabric of IT management systems or could obviously benefit from some improvement in definition and application. A classic example is the need to add a new debtor or creditor to the existing business management systems. This new relationship may need to be defined in more than one system and yet most of the steps in the process required to create the data item are not managed within any existing system. For example:
• Who can request a debtor/creditor to be added?
• How do they make the request?
• Who needs to approve it at a departmental and divisional level?
• Who needs to approve it at a commercial level?
• What supporting checks need to be made to confirm their compliance, your compliance, their applicability within one or more areas of the business etc?
• What supporting documentation needs to be gathered and reviewed?
• Who has final approval once all steps are completed?
• How does this approval get converted into the activity of adding the data record?
• What steps are taken to assure all relevant systems are updated in parallel?
• What steps are required at future dates to confirm this debtor/creditor is still appropriate for your business?
• When this process is followed correctly is it possible to have the new data added to the underlying systems in time for when it is needed or do short cuts get taken in the interests of expediency?
• What costs and risks have you been exposed to because of those short cuts?
If you look within your company today what methods do you use to manage this complicated and critical process in your business? Are you confident that the business rules are always applied, and that the audit of your business in this area can confirm a compliant and transparent practice?
Flowcentric Server gives you control over complicated, human driven processes such as this and will bring confidence, cost reduction and improved service quality to your business.
