Seminar 4

Seminar 4 Order to Cash (OTC)

Group Work Experience

This time it was our turn to give the student-led session, which was about order to cash. Although we seemed to have more than a week to prepare, no one had time to meet up during CNY given that 4 among 5 of us are Chinese. Our first meeting was on Monday. Before that I read through all the materials James posted on wiki, and searched for some detailed information, feeling that the topic was easy to understand and present. However, during the meeting, my teammates were complaining that this topic was too complicated. That was just because they had done a bit more than me: glancing over the textbook. Textbook is a mysterious object. Sometimes, it clears all your doubts, but it makes things complicated the other times. So we decided that each of us took up a textbook, and read through in detail before next discussion. 

             http://www.colourbox.com

In the textbook I was reading, the OTC process was depicted in the order of generating all the documents, which was clear and easy to follow. The document samples were also very helpful in designing our activities. Our case of candy-selling company was from another book.  The troubles all these materials created were the inconsistencies at some points, such as when to do the inventory check and credit check. We cleared this with James, and what he said was right: Use your common sense. Sometimes, there is no one correct answer, but just an appropriate answer that is applicable for most of the common situations.

                                                           http://images.sodahead.com

The role play was really a big project to do. We need to be familiar with the process first. Then we need to give clear instructions, so other students could also understand. Every student must be assigned with some tasks, so the class wouldn’t be out of control. The tasks must not be too difficult, but they need to enable students to learn something… There were too much for us to think about, but the process was quite interesting. I enjoy the process that everyone works on different things but with the same objective. This is just like the rivers busy flowing at different places but they all know that they will meet at the sea. Hope our project 1 will also proceed smoothly like the rivers :) .

So here is some advice for the later groups:

1. Textbooks are really helpful, and you need read all of them to combine and appreciate the ideas. Since the books are using different business cases, you will see different situations.
2. Don’t waste time discussing meet-up time, since we are likely from different courses, and we are busy doing different CCAs. Just share the ideas with available teammates and later tell the others. Of course you need meeting at the stage where you need to combine the ideas and make important decisions.
3. If you have doubts, ask James as early as possible. Don't keep them to the last minute, because James will probably give you some other doubts, while clearing your existing doubts. This is because we haven’t fully understood the topic.
4. Don't give up your fresh ideas easily. They might not be as unrealistic as you thought, with the implementations and modifications of your teammates :) .

Review of Accounting

I just got too much to say in the part above. That was a meaningful experience after all. But the activities before our student-led session were quite interesting as well. The class began with Jeremy’s presentation regarding a conference he attended. The content of the conference was mainly introducing some sustainable companies, which was quite interesting.

After the presentation, we were given a small group project as usual. In the case, the company needs to allocate the rentals to each department according to some proportions, and post the entries every month, which is quite tedious if doing it manually. We were to give some approaches to improve the efficiency of this accounting process. After doing some research, we found two ways to solve this problem: One is to use recurring entry program to make the system post the entries every month automatically; another one is to prepare sample documents as a template so the accountant just need to click “post” every month instead of entering the transaction every time. SAP really is a system with many powerful functions! Maybe I will try some more during the projects.

Order to Cash Process

As mentioned above in the first part, I used to think OTC was a process as simple as receiving the order, fulfilling the order and settling the payment. But many problems will come out when we break down the process into detail. Actually, most of these are not problems in general, because different companies are doing things differently, and there are various situations where the processes need change accordingly.  For example, what’s the time to do credit check and inventory check? And is the delivery order or the packing list the one shipped with products for customer as a checklist? Etc.

The problems with the manual OTC process are mainly from the information out-synchronization and are easy to see. The customers usually can only access the sales department. So just consider if the customer wants to check the state of his order, this would be a nightmare for the company where salespeople need to tell sales clerk, and sales clerk needs to call warehouse supervisor, and pass on to shipment and maybe finally to the transportation. And what happens if the customer wants to change the order? When the information reaches finance department, maybe the invoice has already been finished or even issued according to the initial shipment date.

Seminar 3

Seminar 3 Accounting

What a refreshing morning!

James told us that from this week on, the first part of the seminar would be a recap for the topic discussed last week. This would probably be in the form of a practice like what we did this week.

Review Business Process

We were given a process flow chart which showed the employee claim process of a company, and we were asked to improve this process. It was surprising that the process was simplified from a real large-scale company, because the process was very tedious and inefficient given that they actually got a Claims System. The employee must input the claim details twice: once into the claims form, and once into Claims System. And the physical receipts must go with the printed claims form and go through the whole process. Then the forms need to be checked and signed twice, first by the department manager and then by the payroll clerk. I think this is even more inefficient than my experience in CCAs, where we only need to hand in the receipts and describe the usage of the consumption in a massage to the treasurer. I know for a big company, a more ordered system is needed, but if the process is unnecessarily time-consuming, the overhead might offset the benefit of the process. The department manager could have dealt with many other affairs if he or she does not need to check the tallied information on the forms. 

                                                 http://www.online24x7.in

As I've learned from Organisational Behaviour, the working environment is very important for employees. If the claim process was simpler, the employees might be more pleasant, and the productivity might be increased. Also, the strict checking process might make employees feel untrusted, so it would be hard to link themselves to the company sentimentally, which is not good for the development of the company. Maybe I’ve digressed, but that was indeed what I thought.

So now let’s come back. The following improvements were suggested during the seminar.    

The first suggestion was to be able to perform partial rejection. So when only part of the claims failed, the successful part need not to be claimed again.

Secondly, the physical receipts were troublesome, since they could be easily lost or damaged. Therefore, they need to be handled separately. Some classmates suggested that the physical receipts were not necessary in the process, and they could be collected only at the end to verify the results. I think this was reasonable, and another way was to scan the receipts at the beginning of the process, and the soft copy would go through the process. In whichever ways, the physical receipts were wiped out from the main process. Also, the claims form need not to be printed.

                                                http://www.planetreceipt.com

The third improvement was suggested to be on the claim system, the software. The system only served as a storeroom to record the claims, but actually there were much more it could do to make the process more efficient. If the system could check the tallied records, one step could be deleted from the process. The system could also check if the claims amount exceeded the entitled amount, which would simplify the payroll process. However, many people feel that the virtual system is not reliable, even if the system can make the process much simpler and create few errors.

Additionally, I got another suggestion. The company can set some certain areas where the employee can apply for the claims. For example, the business trip, the transportation, and the social dinner engagement etc, and for each area, a distinct claim form is designed, so the employees must choose which form should be completed. In this way, the chance that the claim is valid may be increased, since the employee would know that the claim was not allowed if they could not find a suitable form to complete.  

Accounting

This topic sounds so familiar! But the practices showed that I've forgot half of what I’ve learned in the course Accounting I and II… So basically, this student led session was mainly about the review of the accounting knowledge we’ve learned. But of course I’ve gained something new besides revision.

I was most impressed by the story of the original accounting process without a software system. We need three people respectively responsible for journals, ledgers and a specific account eg. AR account. So the computer system should also comprise of these three parts. This reminds me of what I’ve learned in the course BC2402 Data Management & Business Intelligence, where the instructor told us that never make up the algorithm on our own. When we design the software, we should always go back to the origin and think about what was the algorithm when people didn’t have computer. This is the same when we try to comprehend complicated software like SAP, the process in reality must be in our mind.

In addition, I realized that ERP systems not only make accounting system more efficient but also more precise. Since the accounting department is not in the picture when transactions happen, the system helps pass the transaction information in time.