Improvements were made to the process of ordering advertisements targeting online users, according to each website's budget. In response to the economic downturn, the company decided to cut back on internal costs, and has since continued with further BPM activities.
Recruit manages many websites; for example, SUUMO (realty and housing website), Hot Pepper Gourmet (coupon and restaurant guide website, former Foomoo), Jaran (hotel reservation website), etc.
Our Internet Marketing Office confirms from each department the number of users that must be guided to each site, and posts advertisements on websites such as major search engines. For example, the goal of realty and housing websites is to have many people register for the open-house events.
With the downward trend in the economy, and a decrease in orders from clients, there began to be talk about reducing internal costs. There were a little under 100 employees working at our department, but we were suddenly told, “In six months we are going to abolish the sales staff-per-client system and reduce the workforce by 50%. We must improve internal business workflows but maintain the current level of performance.”
First we decided to figure out, one-by-one, what each person was doing. It was harder than expected to draw each type of work into diagrams, and the two staff members in charge of workflow improvement basically drew diagrams every day for almost two months. We thoroughly understood the current workflow, so we were able to get it down on paper one way or another. When this was complete, we eliminated redundant and meaningless flows and created an improved flow.
Compared to the task of understanding the current situation, defining the new workflows was easy and took about two weeks. The biggest hurdle when drawing the workflow diagrams was the discussion on how to ensure each employee actually follows the new business processes. We had an internal workflow tool, but we were told it would take over several million yen to customize it, so we had to abandon that idea.
While we were searching for a way out, our boss discovered Questetra BPM Suite, which would allow us to implement the new workflows in a surprisingly direct way. It also let us introduce user distribution of work and manuals, email notifications and deadline management. We use Questetra BPM Suite APIs to integrate it with our other internal systems.
When actually conducting BPM activities, the sense of achievement was great. We’ve been able to connect this to “results,” so we are now able to take on the mission of “progressing BPM activities.” We intend to continue with workflow improvement. The world of advertising is constantly moving, and even posting methods often change, so we have to also constantly make changes in response to the environment.
I think that it’s possible to conduct BPM activities with relatively few members, and that you don’t even need a lot of experience in BPM. Diagrams can be created by anyone who has a normal amount of sense. Recently we try to make commitments to specific goals, such as “Be able to complete which work with how many number of members by what date,” and to be wary of workflows. I think the person who can complain about workflows saying, “who in the world designed this??” is suited to BPM activities.
Main businesses:
Advertising, Internet business, publishing, etc.
workflow, business process management, saas, bpmn, software
