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By Vanessa Richter on December 03 2018 22:43:12
Many of us use flowcharts in our daily work - indeed the creation and deployment of a flowchart is one of the most common tasks in business today. But what do we mean by a flowchart, and what is it supposed to do?
Each flowchart should ideally begin with a Terminator shape, from which the next step should be linked. Each shape should be indicative of a specific stage in the process and there are conventions for each of these, the most common being the rectangular "Process" shape. Many others exist, however, including shapes representing Data, Documents and Decisions. Decision shapes are diamonds, each of the four corners (or nodes) being either a link from the preceding shape or action to be taken in the next stage depending on the decision.
If your organization is looking for ways to reduce costs, the purchase order chain is one area that can be made more efficient. If the purchasing department learns how to draw a flowchart depicting the as is for each department, the overall effort could help reduce costs by eliminating redundant approval processes and mistakes.
Helping an organization map out processes can be a challenging task unless you know how to create sample flowcharts. When attempting to get subject matter experts to redefine their business processes, it is imperative to help them identify gaps or redundancies in their current as-is process.
As a process mapping consultant, it is imperative to get everyone to see not only their own procedures, but how they interconnect into the organizational structure. Once in place and agreed upon by all the contributors, you begin to be able to challenge the current way of doing business and assist them in finding inefficiencies that could be costing the business thousands of dollars.
Many departments have established business rules based on guiding principles and philosophies that may have been created years before. Because there has been no initiative in documenting these procedures, chances are that there are many rules still in place that are causing unnecessary barriers and redundancies that add to the purchase order cycle time.A flowchart is a sequence of graphical symbols and shapes that can be used to help subject matter experts visually walk through their processes and validate those rules for accuracy and relevancy based on current business needs.
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