Workflow optimization

Studying the structure and list of duties carried out by selling department personnel shows that to make their work effective we need to introduce up-to-date technology and corresponding structure in the company. The structure should comply with a technology and the technology should solidly frame the business it is structured. In our case we have a selling system of utility services supply. And in fact? There is no a clear cut technology. If a technology is absent, the technological supervision is absent either. Personnel is not aware of the targets of its work neither general - get profit nor targets for every employee. Usually the reply to the question: «What is the key target of your work?», — is: «The consumers should be satisfied». Such structure is surprisingly ugly. It is turned out (!), that the structure is created for personnel but not for optimal technology. If a person works good then a special department is created. If a person should be made redundant, his/her office is deemed to be unnecessary. Sometimes it happens that a department is formed by personnel (for their own purposes): "to control more but to be less responsible". Yet, a structure is ready! Later everybody starts wondering why work is done so poor. And why should it be different? There is no specialization. Everybody does everything. As it was set it is impossible to control volume and quality of work. So, nobody's guilty, everybody works. In such environment one of the most effective incentives - piecework payment system is impossible. And it results in: improper organization and poor results. As it doomed to be.

Understanding all this in 2002 we developed a technology for selling department which was successfully implemented. In other case new structure and personnel experience highlighted the fact that key positions were occupied by biased non-efficient people, within this new structure these people were identified as incompetent idlers. But unfortunately after the general director who was eager to introduce changes left his office this structure was removed instead of making idlers redundant. It was possible due to the so-called "flexibility" of a billing system. Such flexibility is necessary on the stage of finetuning only and then the system has to be solid. Otherwise personnel starts performing each other's duties and system is ruined.