Process Consultant, South Africa

What a process review uncovers in South African companies

A process review is a structured look at where work slows, repeats or escapes control. In South African distributors, manufacturers and service firms, a few patterns show up often enough that the review checks for them deliberately:

• Accounts opened before checks finish: sales starts trading with a new customer while the credit application is still incomplete.
• Unpaid debit orders handled ad hoc: each returned collection is dealt with by whoever notices it, with no standard customer contact or re-presentation rule.
• Supplier files out of date: B-BBEE certificates and tax documents expire without anyone noticing, and procurement reports become unreliable.
• Bank detail changes accepted by email: a request to update a supplier's account is processed without independent verification.
• Outage workarounds nobody wrote down: when the system is unavailable, staff use paper or spreadsheets, and the catch-up afterwards is inconsistent.

Each finding is recorded against the step where it occurs, with its effect on cash, compliance, fraud risk or customer service. That lets leadership decide which problems to address first and which are acceptable. The core method appears under business process consulting; the South African version adds explicit attention to continuity and supplier documentation.

Order to cash with credit control and debit orders

For many South African companies, getting paid involves more than invoicing. Customers apply for credit, some pay by debit order, others by EFT, and collections teams work through unpaid items every month. The order-to-cash map therefore starts before the first order.

It covers the credit application and the documents required, who checks them, who approves the limit and when the account becomes active. It then follows the order through delivery and tax invoicing, with the details your accountant confirms a valid tax invoice must carry, and on to collection.

Debit orders deserve their own swimlane. The map shows how mandates are captured and stored, how the collection file is prepared and approved, and what happens when items come back unpaid or disputed: who contacts the customer, how soon, whether and when the item is re-presented, and when an account is placed on hold. Credit notes and write-offs have clear approval limits.

Without this design, each unpaid item is handled differently depending on who sees it first, and customers receive inconsistent messages. With it, collections become a routine with an owner. The banking rules and timing for debit orders depend on your bank and collection arrangement, so those details are confirmed with them. Every map uses the swimlane conventions on my ERP process mapping page, so it can later seed a requirements document.

Procurement, supplier records and B-BBEE documentation

Procurement in South Africa carries a documentation burden that is easy to underestimate. Companies that measure their B-BBEE position need reliable supplier classifications and supporting documents, and every company needs protection against payment fraud.

The procure-to-pay map begins with supplier onboarding: who may request a new supplier, which documents are required, who verifies bank details through an independent channel and who approves the record. It records the B-BBEE certificate or affidavit, its expiry and who is responsible for requesting a renewal. Supplier classification for scorecard purposes is advised by your B-BBEE specialist; the process ensures the data behind it is captured and kept current.

The map then follows the purchase: requisition, approval within limits, purchase order, goods receipt, supplier invoice matching and payment. For imports, it shows where customs documents and landed costs are recorded and who confirms the VAT treatment with your accountant.

Payment release gets particular care. The design separates who captures a payment batch from who releases it on the banking platform, and treats any change of beneficiary details as an exception requiring verification. These controls cost little to define and protect against one of the most common forms of business fraud.

Where the maps show a need for a new system, the requirements work continues through my ERP business analyst work for South Africa.

Fallback steps for power and connectivity interruptions

Most process documentation assumes systems are always available. In South Africa, that assumption has repeatedly been tested, and processes need written fallback steps rather than improvised ones.

For each critical process, the design answers a few questions:

• What must continue? Sales at the counter, goods receiving and dispatch usually cannot stop. Approvals and reports often can wait.
• How is it recorded during the outage? Pre-numbered manual documents, an offline-capable app or a simple spreadsheet template, chosen deliberately and controlled.
• Who catches up afterwards? A named person enters or checks the captured transactions once systems return, within an agreed time, and reconciles them with stock and cash.
• What is checked? Duplicates, missing documents and price differences between the manual record and the system.

These procedures also cover connectivity failures at branches, which can happen without any power cut. The design notes which processes depend on cloud systems and which can run locally, information that becomes useful when systems are later evaluated.

Writing fallback steps down has a further benefit: new staff learn them before the next interruption instead of during it. My ERP consulting for South African firms covers how hosting and system choices take these needs into account.

Agreeing the process first, then choosing tools

When a company buys software before agreeing its processes, the system's default settings become the process by accident. Credit approval limits, debit order handling and supplier onboarding end up shaped by whatever the implementer configured first. Settling the process beforehand reverses that, so the system is judged against a clear design.

You finish with as-is and to-be maps, a delegation table with limits your directors set, role procedures including fallback steps, and a short list of next steps. Several may involve no technology whatsoever. Others point to settings in your current accounting package, a new system, or repetitive tasks that suit automation, such as unpaid debit order follow-up or expiry reminders for supplier documents. For that group, see my South African business automation work.

The work is remote, scheduled in South African business hours, with branch and warehouse staff joining online. A site visit can be arranged if seeing a location genuinely helps. Procedures are written in English; Afrikaans, isiZulu or other versions, where staff want them, are produced by your own people working from that text. Vendors and implementers pay me nothing, directly or indirectly. The South Africa overview describes my other support there.