Understanding How to Draw a Flowchart can Find Problems in your Purchase Order Process
Creating purchase requisitions is a standard function in every business. Unfortunately, the manual paper purchase order or requisition is one of the most frustrating areas of every business because the constant approval issues and long turnaround times that can occur.
If your organization ids 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.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 thepurchase 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.
A flowchart can enable the process analyst to effectively document the information given to them by the subject matter experts. With a defined list of symbols, directional arrows and flow diagrams, flowcharts can help the team find gaps and or problem areas that have been known for awhile but have never been visually mapped out in an as-is process map.
Once the team recognizes the problem areas, they can easily adjust the map to a future state version that can dramatically affect performance and turnaround time of the purchase order process. Usually, this exercise takes place during an e-procurement project as part of the analysis phase, but can be done at any time. As long as there is a resource who has the proper skills and knows how to draw a flowchart to help the various departments identify their current procedures and potential problem areas within the purchase order approval process.
