Organization Behavior – CSI Framework 1

Table of Contents

Introduction

Purpose................................................................................................................................3

Process.................................................................................................................................4

Find Phase…………………………………………………………………………………6

Frame Phase…………….…………………………………………………………………7

Formulate Phase………...………………………………………………………………11

Solve Phase……...……...………………………………………………………………14
Organization Behavior – CSI Framework 2

INTRODUCTION:

Our organization is a MSME IT Professional Services Company having presence

in India, USA, Singapore, Europe, Dubai and Australia. We serve medium to large
enterprises across Asia, Europe, North America and Australia. Our expertise spans
many industries with special emphasis on Manufacturing, Banking, Insurance and IT.
We have major presence in India with over 1500 Employees working from different
regions.

PURPOSE:

Despite of year on year Revenue growth of more than 25%, management is

facing challenges of timely receiving the payments from different customers. Few
Invoices are pending from more than 3 years. Sales and Finance teams have tried hard
to recover the amount but failed to receive the pending amount on time. After multiple
attempts Management has decided to focus on this centralized challenge which is
identified as Spark “
“Delay/Backlog in Invoice Payment of 10% of the Revenue every year
”. Management is clear to avoid Legal Involvement in the process to maintain the
customer relationships.
PROCESS:
Current billing Process in an Organization is:
 Employee submits the client side manager approved timesheet along
with Project Code (our internal mechanism to track the projects) to
Sales Operations team and their Reporting Manager. Timesheet is
submitted by two ways:
 Email
 Client Portal (Access is available with Sales Team)
 Sales Operations team verifies the timesheet and attach it with the
Purchase Order and sends the request to Finance team to generate
the Invoice.
Organization Behavior – CSI Framework 3

 Finance generates the Invoice and share back with Sales Operations
team.
 SO team then share the Invoice with Customer SPOCS.

To start with, our team has decided to follow detailed Collaborative Structured
Inquiry process.
We have identified the team from different departments who has good knowledge
and understanding of the related topic. Since management has agreed to work on the
permanent solution to this issue they were committed to accept the solution which will
be submitted by this team. Then we have identified the facilitator from Change
management team as she has good understanding to deal with different teams and
communicate effectively so that they reach to the consensus.
Identified team members were asked to write all the Symptoms that are
correlated with our spark. The facilitator has collected all the information related to
Accounts Receivable and put them into one consolidated document. Facilitator has
verified the information and with proper evidences and discussions she has decided the
inclusion of a symptom or its rejection. Each symptom is defined under the category like
Resource, Behavior, Communication etc.
Team members have reviewed all symptoms in the report and then we have
identified all “causes” that are correlated with the set of selected symptoms.
Organization Behavior – CSI Framework 4

Identify Team Members

Identify Facilitator
Fin Train the team about the CSI process
d

Mention the Spark

List all the correlated Symptoms
Fra Catagorize the Symptioms
Take team consensus
me

Identify the causes

For Map these causes with correlated Symptions
mul Take team consensus
ate

Define the process that will solve the spark

Sol Present the findings and solution to the management
ve

FIND PHASE
Organization Behavior – CSI Framework 5

Below Team members and Facilitator have been identified to execute the CSI
process and find out Solution to the identified spark
“Delay/Backlog in Invoice Payment of 10% of the Reve
” More than 5M $ needs to be
recovered from the customers this time. Since the process was new to the team,
formal training has been provided and made them aware of the process.

Member Name Designation Roles and Responsibilities

Abhishek Bhate Managing Project Sponsor

Director
Gayathri Priya (Facilitator) Change Change Management
Management
Officer
Satyajit Ghorpade VP, Finance Cash flow and P/L Management
Jaya Hasani Project Manage smooth delivery of projects
Manager
Rachna Barsagade VP, Delivery Business Unit Head
Umesh Bohra VP, Sales Account Management and Net New Sales

Nazia Khan WFM Head Meet Demand and Supply of requirements

Vineet Kunchur Associate VP - Manage Timesheet, PO and Invoices

Sales
Operations

FRAME PHASE
Organization Behavior – CSI Framework 6

During this phase we have identified the below Symptoms that are correlated
with our spark and categorize those into different categories. Proper evidence
have been found to justify the symptoms.

Category Symptoms Evidence

A-Process 1.No single source of truth to It is identified data is

view the data maintained in different systems
like Tally, excel sheets and
other apps. Extremely difficult
process to analyze the
consolidated information
A-Process 2.Manual process to maintain Most of the data is available in
the data different excel sheets. Infact
some data is never captured in
the system
B-Communication 1.Multiple teams involved in Upon requesting the relevant
Order to Cash cycle data it is understood different
teams maintain different
records and that too in their
own format.
A-Process 3.Ambiguous timesheet Timesheet Approval process is
approval process done through dual ways: Few
employees sends approved
timesheets via Emails and few
have their approved
timesheets on customer Portal

C-Behavior 1.Working culture Each person involved in the

payment process has their own
methods of working and they
Organization Behavior – CSI Framework 7

rarely connect proactively with

other department to highlight
the issue. They all work in silos
A-Process 4.Longer payment terms agreed As an MSME organization max
with many customers payment terms should be 45
days but it is identified that with
many customers our sales has
agreed for 45-90 days of
payment terms.
D-Resource 1.Timesheet submission Employees are expected to
timelines submit the approved
timesheets before 4th of every
month but it was observed
many of them take longer time
to submit the timesheet
C-Behavior 2.Sales Account Owners are not Sales Account owners have
concerned if the Invoices are kept their operations team
raised or not accountable to generate the
invoices. 90% of the sales
owners never takes the status
of the Invoices or payments.
B-Communication 2. Finance team follow up with Finance team keeps a monthly
Sales for recovery meeting named as “Marco
polo” with Sales team to
understand the Invoices and
Payments status, challenges
and the timelines by when the
recovery can be done
D-Resource 5.Incorrect Invoices shared with It is been observed many times
B- Communication customers Invoices are sent to customers
with wrong information like
Organization Behavior – CSI Framework 8

their Address which is

changed, Wrong billing amount
(mismatch in employee
present days compared to
billed days) etc
B-Communication 3.Invoices submitted to In some cases Sales team
unauthorized customer SPOC submits the Invoices to
unauthorized SPOC at
customer side, which in turn
consumes time to forward it to
right person who is authorized
to make the payments.
A-Process 6.Major delay in payments when Wherever routing vendors are
B- Communciation routing vendor is involved involved they make the
payment clear when customer
pay them. This third-party
involvement delays the
payment in most of the cases.
A-Process 7.Cash flow issues with Finance To make payments to
suppliers, employees and
other expenses, Finance team
sometimes face challenges
due to the delay in Accounts
Receivable
A-Process 8.Suppliers follow up for the In almost majority of the cases
B- Communication payments Suppliers and customers
payment terms differ. They
expect us to make the
payments within 30 days and
in turn our customers are
paying in more than 45-90
Organization Behavior – CSI Framework 9

days.
A-Process 9.No clarity on customer wise After requesting the
recovery amount information from Finance on
customer wise pending
recovery or recovery more
than payment terms agreed,
there are No consolidated
reports available with the team.
D-Resource 2.Sales Ops team dependency Sales Operations team don’t
on Finance to alert them for set the triggers at their level to
recovery follow up for the payments
from the customers unless
Finance team ask them.
E- Leadership 1.Mostly Leaders not involved in There are very few cadence
Finance and Sales cadence calls found in which Leaders
calls were involved to understand
the payment status and root
cause of the delay. They give
very high-level solution and
just instruct the teams to
recover the money

FORMULATE PHASE
Organization Behavior – CSI Framework 10

As a team we have emphasized on ensuring that we are not taking any expert
lens, we are not jumping to the solution directly, and we are ensuring UNIQUE
information is unearthed to support the causes highlighted below. Our team
focused on defining causes based on looking across all symptoms and then
figure out which symptoms are generated by a cause. It took more than 3 hours
to reach the consensus at team level on the causes we believe are at play here:

S No Causes Evidence Category

1 Budget constraint of After multiple communication Process,
Previous Management to old management to explain Communication
to spend on ERP tools the need of the enterprise
A1, A2, A4, B2, A9 level and centralized tools,
they never took action or told
the Leaders to evaluate the
tools fit for the organization
2 Mismatch in payment We have found the payment Process,
terms of Routing terms in Master Service Communication
Vendors, Customers Agreement of Routing
and Suppliers. Vendors, Customers and
A6, A8, B6, B8 Suppliers are different. For eg
If Supplier X employee is
deployed on our project for Y
customer and his payment
term is 30 days but it is
identified with customer Y the
payment terms is 60 days.
Finance team not ready to
release the payment to
Supplier until customer has
not paid.
3 RACI not defined in the Upon asking the RACI matrix Resource,
Organization Behavior – CSI Framework 11

complete order-pay to understand the roles and Communication,

cycle responsibilities no one had Behaviour
B1, C1, D1, C2, D2 and was following the RACI
matrix. It was communicated
by all teams that we have
never thought of bringing
process and RACI in place.
4 Inefficient fragmented There are individual Process,
processes in place processes available in the Communication,
A3, D5, B5, A7, system for generating project Behaviour
code, Timesheet verification,
Invoice generation,
Contractors hiring etc
however these processes are
not linked with each other and
run in silos
5 Sales Team hesitate to It is being found is sales team Communication
reach out to right members are comfortable
stakeholders at with or have good relation
customer side. with any person at customer
B3 side they like to continue the
discussions with them even
though the payment delays.
Sales Regional Heads rarely
speak to or visit stakeholders
to solve the challenge
6 Lack of leadership level There are very few structured Leadership
Focused meetings meetings found in which
E1 Leaders are involved. Minutes
are never captured
Organization Behavior – CSI Framework 12

From this exercise we could clearly figure out there are process and communication
challenges within the teams and organization.

SOLVE PHASE:

1. Right team needs to be identified which is responsible for Payments and

other financial updates.

2. Internal to Organization, it is decided now onwards Finance team will directly

share the Invoices with Customer Finance team.

3. Sales Ops team will be merged with Finance to generate the correct and

Ontime Invoices.

4. Sales team should start speaking to customers and ask them to revise the

payment terms to 45 days as per India Government policy.

5. Weekly Collection cadence to be setup with Business, Sales and Finance

teams.

6. Complete end-end process will be defined with RACI matrix which will be

implemented in ERP tool- NetSuite or SAP HANA.

We have submitted the report to the Management and they are in discussion to

finalize the procurement of right ERP tool to implement within the organization.