Accounting / Business Office
Business Office / Accounting
An Accounting or Business Office is different because the work increases or decreases based on a weekly or monthly cycle.
The best approach in this department is to first consider the flow or steps of the major processes and eliminate unnecessary steps and reorganize what remains. And second, to consider how long it takes to perform individual tasks in each process by day of the process cycle.Case Study #72
Christina knew her accountants and Business Office clerks in the communities worked hard. In fact there were times of the year when she felt guilty asking them to stay late yet one more night. What she learned by analyzing process flows and measuring labor requirements was that there were times of each month when she was asking for the impossible, yet there were other times when productivity was less than 50%. The challenge was to try to smooth out the peaks where possible and then find creative ways to employ the right amount of staffing for the different periods of every accounting cycle.
Analyzing the flows showed Christina that her department could eliminate over 20% of the reports they prepared because they were no longer required or the information was being generated elsewhere - often by her own department on another report. Each major process flow was studied and in some cases the labor requirements were reduced by 80% just by eliminating unnecessary and duplicate work.
Measuring labor requirements was the next task undertaken. Each 'necessary' step of each flow was measured to establish a time per volume for each major Activity.
Central or decentralized? It was an easier decision with the measurements because Christina found she could smooth out the work more easily if she considered the home office department and the community operations together rather than as two separate areas. Tasks were distributed based on a new set of criteria which included skill level, the importance of economies of scale and batching and finally on the balance of the labor requirements across the month long accounting cycle.
Outcomes Christina found that they had reduced the amount of work by 18%. Work was smoothed out by distributing the work differently between Home Office and the communities. Overall, the department was able to improve the information it provided to Operations and Finance and reduce labor hours by over 20%.
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