Business Process Consultant, Jordan

From quotation to a cleared check

Order to cash in many Jordanian distributors and traders ends not with a bank transfer but with a stack of post-dated checks. A sales rep collects them on a route, brings them to the office, and someone logs them before they go into a safe until maturity. Each handoff is a point where a check can be delayed, misallocated or forgotten, and where a returned check can sit unnoticed for weeks.

I map the full path with sales, credit control and finance:

• Who may accept a post-dated check, for which customers and up to what horizon your credit policy allows.
• How checks are recorded on receipt, and who signs for them at each handover.
• Who prepares the deposit list as checks mature, and who confirms clearing against the bank statement.
• What happens when a check is returned: who informs the customer, who blocks further credit and who decides on legal follow-up.
• How the rep's visit plan reflects overdue and returned items, so collection and selling are not separate worlds.

The redesign usually brings custody, recording and credit decisions into separate hands, with a daily reconciliation between what reps say they collected and what reached the office. Legal steps on returned checks belong to your lawyer; the process makes sure the paperwork they need is complete. How a CRM supports the sales side of this is covered on the CRM consultant page for Jordan.

E-invoicing as a set of owned steps

Jordan's national e-invoicing system adds steps to every sale for companies in scope, and much of the discussion focuses on whether software can connect to it. The process side receives less attention, yet it decides whether invoicing runs calmly or turns into a daily scramble.

Questions I settle with finance and sales before any system work:

• Timing: is the invoice issued at dispatch, on delivery or on acceptance, and does that match what customers expect to receive?
• Rejections: who looks at a rejected submission, who corrects the customer or item data behind it, and how quickly must it be resubmitted?
• Corrections: when is a credit note used instead of a new invoice, and who approves it?
• Master data: who may create or change customers and items, since bad data is a common reason for rejections.
• Reconciliation: who confirms each month that accepted invoices agree with the ledger before the sales tax return?

Which invoices are in scope and what each must contain is for your tax advisor to confirm, and I do not interpret those rules. The process simply makes their guidance somebody's job at a defined step. The technical connection is a separate subject, handled on my system integration page for Jordan.

Batches, quarantine and recall in distribution

For pharmaceutical suppliers, medical distributors and food traders, the riskiest process steps sit between the loading dock and the shelf. Goods arrive with batch numbers and expiry dates, may wait in quarantine for a quality check, and are released for sale only when someone with authority signs. Later, short-dated stock may be returned, discounted or destroyed, and a recall may require tracing every customer who received a given batch.

When these steps rely on memory and paper, the gaps are predictable. Released stock is picked before the paperwork is complete. Near-expiry goods are found only at stock count. A recall becomes a frantic search through delivery notes.

I map each step with warehouse, quality and sales staff and agree:

• Who receives and records batches, and what happens when the supplier's paperwork disagrees with the goods.
• Who releases from quarantine, and what record proves it.
• How picking rules decide which batch leaves first, and who may override them.
• How returns are inspected and whether they go back to stock.
• Who leads a recall, and how quickly the customer list must be produced.

Regulatory requirements for medicines and food are for your regulatory affairs staff to confirm. My role is a process that meets them consistently. Sector background is on pharmaceutical ERP and distribution ERP.

Project delivery for service exporters and procurement for regional offices

Two other process families matter in Jordan's economy, and they could hardly be more different.

IT, outsourcing and consulting firms that sell to clients in the Gulf, Europe or North America run a project-to-invoice cycle. A scope is signed, people are assigned, hours are logged, the client accepts a milestone and a dollar invoice goes out, followed by a receipt with intermediary charges deducted. The usual breaks are timesheets approved late, change requests delivered but never billed, and finance unaware that a milestone was accepted. I map the cycle with delivery leads and finance, set deadlines for timesheet approval and define who records client acceptance.

Regional offices and organizations based in Amman often follow procurement rules set by a parent company or a funder: a number of quotations depending on value, committee review, conflict-of-interest declarations and a complete file for each purchase. Those files are frequently paper, stamped and signed by several people. I document the rules as they apply, design a procurement route that meets them without needless loops, and build the approval matrix that a system can later enforce. Funder conditions and audit expectations come from your compliance staff; I make sure each one appears as a step with an owner.

Both cycles end up feeding the month-end close, so I map where their outputs land in finance and what record to report needs from them.

Procedures your staff use, and the point where software enters

Process documents fail when they are long, written for auditors and stored where nobody looks. I write them for the person doing the work: one page per role, a few steps, the exceptions that actually happen and the name of the person to ask. Your team can produce Arabic versions for daily use, and I keep the English master in step with any changes.

Each process gets an owner with authority to change it. Owners review their process when a new product line, a new customer type or a regulatory change arrives, and they approve updates to the maps and procedures. This keeps the design alive after the workshops end.

Only once the processes are agreed does software selection make sense. The maps become scenarios for vendor demos, the authority matrix becomes approval rules, and the control points become test cases. That handoff is covered by my ERP business analyst work in Jordan and the ERP selection page for Jordan. If the processes are stable and the remaining pain is repetitive manual work, my automation page for Jordan describes the next step.

The work is remote, with workshops held during hours that suit Amman, and I take no fee from any vendor. My general approach is on business process consulting, and the Jordan hub lists everything else.