02 · Requirements · Purchase to payment
In an eleven-box flow chart, half the boxes have never been walked
The process consultant times real documents, deletes nodes nobody runs, and stops the new system from adding three more confirmations than WeChat. He does not write judgement sentences for the requirements analyst.
On the wall: request, supervisor, purchasing, price comparison, general manager, place order, arrival, QC, putaway, reconciliation, payment. Every box looks complete.
What actually happened on twenty documents: the general manager only saw three over 50,000 yuan. QC and putaway were the same person, quantity entered twice. Price comparison lived in purchasing's own sheet.
The process consultant deletes steps. He does not draw the status quo neater
Many companies already have an eleven-box flow chart on the meeting-room wall, unrelated to actual documents. The mark of a process consultant is taking a batch of real documents and timing them against the boxes: who signed this box, how long it took, and whether goods still came in when it was not signed. A box nobody has walked, drawn into the new system, becomes required. Once required is more trouble than WeChat, the floor will go around the system, and process improvement becomes two sets of books.
A step he keeps must change stock, money, or an outward promise. Notify, CC, “say it in the group” become messages. They do not occupy a document state. Each extra state adds another explanation for implementation, training, and exceptions. He does not write judgement sentences for the requirements analyst, but he will mark “this step and the next are actually the same person”, so the system does not fake a split of self-submit, self-approve. He also does not decide the 50,000-yuan privilege. That is finance policy. He only proves: on the last twenty documents, the general-manager box was almost empty, and an empty box should not be a required path for every document.
How to read a batch of documents, instead of only listening to the process owner
What the process owner tells is usually the policy version. The process consultant wants the document version. He will ask for twenty purchase documents from the last month, with amounts, the time and name in each box, and whether they were finally paid. Then he does three things. First, mark boxes that never happened. Second, mark boxes that happened but did not change what followed — for example a price-comparison result with no attachment, a QC conclusion with no quantity. Third, mark boxes that happened outside the system — for example price comparison in a sheet on a personal PC, inbound quantity changed in WeChat. The third class is the most dangerous. If the new system does not give it an official place, it will stay outside. The process will look shorter. The data will still be broken.
The revised process has to be replayable on the same old documents. A document that cannot replay is not an exception that can be ignored. It is a real world the new process has not covered. What it cannot cover has to be written as an explicit exception path — for example only over 50,000 yuan goes to the general manager — not pretended on the main path that every document goes there.
After eleven boxes closed to six steps, month-end needed one less sheet
The twenty documents showed: under 50,000 yuan it stops at the supervisor; a price-comparison attachment must hang on the purchase document, or the order cannot be placed; the QC conclusion writes onto the putaway document, instead of a separate QC form nobody reads; payment still sits in the finance system; the purchase document only supplies quantity and price needed for reconciliation. The general manager, a standalone notify, and the duplicated inbound quantity were taken off. The new six steps: request, supervisor, purchasing places the order, arrival putaway, reconciliation, payment. At month-end finance checks by document number, and no longer asks the warehouse clerk to export a second sheet from WeChat.
The purchasing lead first opposed taking off the general-manager box, because policy said so. The process consultant put the three documents that actually reached the general manager next to the seventeen that never did. If policy is to match reality, it should become an amount condition. If every document must still go there, they have to accept seventeen back-signed documents, and the fact that the goods were already used. The customer chose the amount condition. That choice went into scope, and to the Requirements analyst as a sentence that must not be skipped.
If after go-live the new system has three more confirmations than WeChat, the process consultant has to come back and see which box revived. Revival often comes from “add it first, we can configure skip later”. A required field that can be skipped, the floor will always skip, while audit is told the system supports the full process. That is the design a process consultant has to stop.