Business processes set-up in Bitrix24 for “Derevo” Hostel

Problem

As the hostel developed a huge and complex structure of interaction between the company's departments was formed. It complicated significantly the work processes control.

This caused the following difficulties:

• Various work issues were to be approved often and simultaneously by different Department Heads. The approval process itself was not controlled in any way and was often carried out orally. It all created additional difficulties in the daily, wasting a lot of time and led to the following problems:
• Invoicing and payment control became more complicated. Due to the large volume of work requiring additional attention, the risk for company employees and their managers to miss a wrong invoice or some other error in their work increased.
• Drafting and approval within the company got more complicated. Since many documents required approval of several responsible persons at once, the process of drawing up these documents turned into a long and difficult task for the employee working on it.
• Applying and approval on various issues within the company, such as applications for vacation leave and cash withdrawal for company needs, became more complicated. According to internal rules employees had to coordinate their vacation with several authorities within the company, such as Team Manager, the HR department, and the CEO. Along with business growth and the increase in employees, the flow of such applications drastically gained, which started to require huge working time and increased the approval time.

It was necessary to set up an automated system that would allow with minimal time consumption a multi-level coordination between heads of various departments. Responsible employees should able to constantly monitor the approval status and their manager to track the history of all changes.

Solution

To solve the issues we set up automation of business processes in Bitrix24, which significantly simplified the work of employees and their managers and saved a lot of working time.

All approvals are made by requesting through a standardized form

1. An employee creates a request by first selecting the desired topic/type (vacation request, invoicing/payment) The request already contains all the fields necessary for the selected type/topic. In the future the employee can track the status of the request live on the portal or by visiting the request itself.

2. Once the request is sent, it reaches the responsible person, who depending on the type of application and authority, can:

   • Approve the request and delegate it to the final contractor. As an example, agree onan invoice and submit a request to accounting.
   • Submit the request for further approval to the next person in the chain if multi-level approval is the case.
   • Refuse approval of the request.
3. If the responsible person is the final executor, complete it and close it, attaching all the necessary data to the request.
4. Once approvals are made, the request will be displayed in the applicant’s feed as either completed or rejected. The applicant will be able to check the details of the closed request.
5. Each participant has the opportunity at his own level to comment on the request or attach any necessary file.

Employee with Bitrix24 administrator rights can make necessary changes to the business process settings if any structural change occurs.

What it looks like from system administrator’s view:

1. Business process administration page. This page provides a list of all process types configured in the system.
2. Visiting the section dedicated to a specific type of process, we see a list of current requests.

3. An employee with Bitrix24 administrator rights can get detailed information on all requests and track the change history.

   • To view the history, click on the edit button in this menu or double-click on the desired line. Then, in the “Business Processes” tab, click on the current status
   • History of changes

4. Once the settings of a specific business process are visited we see the structure/path according to which all such requests will be processed. Here the administrator can change the structure/path and stages of request processing and can reassign those responsible for a particular stage.

   • Manager selection stage
   • Stage of adding a second manager
   • Change approver stage

As a result:

1. We have simplified the approval process and made it more transparent and controllable for hostel managers.
2. Employees no longer have to create a large number of side tasks and correspondence to coordinate work issues. Order and a clear process appeared.
3. The flow of applications to the accounting department was normalized. All applications are now received in a centralized stream, already approved by the responsible persons and with all the necessary information, which makes accountants free from unnecessary explanations.
4. Clients no longer have to wait for a response to any invoice or document request. All approvals are completed as quickly as possible.

All these improvements save a lot of time for all participants in business processes, allowing each employee of “Derevo” Hostel to focus on completing their tasks.