Invoices go out ten days late. A customer calls for the third time about their order. The reflex is to look for a tool: new software, one more module, a shared Excel sheet. Before you buy anything, it pays to know where the work actually travels between the customer's request and the money landing in your account. An afternoon and a blank wall are enough to see it.
Here is a simple method that suits a business of a handful to a few dozen people. It needs no software and no jargon.
1. Pick one process, with a clear start and end
"Sort out the admin" is too broad. Pick one specific flow that hurts and happens often. A few that work well:
- from a quote request to the invoice being paid;
- from a purchase order to the supplier bill being booked in the accounts;
- from a new hire signing to their first day with every access they need.
Write the first and last events at the top of the wall, for example "a customer sends a request" and "the payment is reconciled". Anything before or after is out of scope for this session.
2. Invite the people who do the work
The manager knows the official version of the process. Whoever books the invoices, whoever prepares the orders and the salesperson know the real version, detours included. You need both. Three to five people, no more, or the session turns into a meeting.
Say plainly that the aim is to find where the process gets stuck, not who is doing a bad job. Anyone who fears being judged will describe what should happen instead of what does.
3. Kit: a wall, sticky notes, three colours
There is an international standard for drawing processes, BPMN, published by ISO as ISO/IEC 19510. It is useful to analysts and developers, but you don't need it for this first map. Three colours will do:
- yellow for an action ("prepare the quote", "send the invoice");
- blue for a document or tool (the PDF quote, Excel, the mailbox, the accounting software);
- pink for a problem, a wait or an unanswered question.
Draw one horizontal lane per person or role. Whenever work moves from one lane to another, that's a handover, and handovers are where things most often get lost.
4. Draw what really happens
Start from a recent, concrete case: "last week's order for this customer". Follow it step by step. For every sticky note, ask three questions: who does it, with what, and how does the next person know it's their turn.
Also note the exceptions that keep coming back: the customer who pays in two instalments, the quote changed after it was accepted, the invoice sent to the wrong address. If an exception happens every week, it is part of the process.
Allow an hour and a half for a normal-sized process. If you go past two hours, the scope is too wide: split it and keep the second half for another session.
5. Look for four kinds of problem
Once the map is on the wall, step back and look for:
- waits: a document sits in an inbox or on a desk until someone remembers it;
- re-keying: the same information is typed twice, in the quote and then the invoice, or in Excel and then the accounts;
- loops: a file goes back a step because something was missing at the start;
- the single person: a step only one person knows how to do, which stops when they are on holiday or off sick.
Put a pink note on each one. Often two or three pink notes account for most of the delay. Those are the ones to tackle first.
6. Three decisions for each pink note
For each problem you keep, there are three possible answers, in this order:
- remove the step if it no longer serves a purpose (a double check left over from an old incident, a report nobody reads);
- simplify or reassign: give the decision to whoever has the information, set a clear rule, write the step down so a second person can do it;
- automate when the task is repetitive and the rule is stable. If you do the same thing twice, that's where a tool makes sense.
For each decision, write down a name and a date. Without an owner, the map stays a nice souvenir on the wall.
What the map gives you afterwards
Take a photo of the map and redraw it cleanly on one page. It helps you train a new hire, organise cover during holidays and, if you are considering software such as Odoo, it doubles as your requirements. A serious integrator will ask how you work today anyway. With the map, you have the answer, and you can check that the tool on offer fixes your pink notes rather than the ones in a demo.
If you'd like an outside facilitator to run the session, our hour packs cover this kind of workshop: info@z80.be or +32 494 111 041.