Flow Chart Design

Design a Flowchart for a Process
OPS571/ Operations Management
October 1, 2012
Jose L. Hernandez, MBA

Start
Flow Chart: Travel Expense Reports

Task: Filing Travel Expense Reports

Gathering Receipts

Entering Opportunity updates in CRM
Entering ERP Travel Expenses
Writing Trip Reports
Mailing Receipts & Reports

Decisions: Expense Policies

Identifying key CRM opportunities
Getting approval for any budget exceptions
Filing/Locating Expense Receipts
Summarizing Meeting Action Items

Process Delays

Reporting/CRM Entry Delays
Awaiting Electronic receipts
Acct / Mgmt Approval
Replacing lost paper receipts

Preapproval
Policy
Finish
Flexibility
Automation
Scanned Receipts
What to consider?
Finish

Factors that Affect the Process Design
The travel expense report process is a time-consuming process that has significant impact on personal cash flow.   Because my business travel averages four days per week, managing expense reports requires significant time.   Failure to stay on top of this process results in slow reimbursement which can result in expensive interest charges.   The average turnaround time between incurring a business travel expense and being reimbursed is 45 days.   The goal of focusing on the inefficiencies in the process and re-engineering this workflow will be to reduce that time by 3 weeks.   Because credit card expenses have a 30 day grace period, reducing the turnaround time by 3 weeks will eliminate the interest expenses associated with the slow process.
The task of filing travel expense reports includes several personal steps.   These are: gathering receipts, writing trip reports, entering opportunity updates in the CRM (customer relationship management) software salesforce.com, entering travel expenses into the ERP system for reimbursement, and finally mailing receipts and reports to accounting.
With these tasks, there are also several decisions that must be made.   These include: evaluating expenses...