Our new automated billing software has eliminated ninety percent of the manual work for our three accounts receivable clerks. We are committed to keeping them because they are stellar core values fits, but we must restructure our finance department without creating payroll bloat. How do we design new, high-impact seats for them on the Accountability Chart without inventing make-work positions?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

When automation eliminates manual tasks, it is an opportunity to redeploy your best people to higher-value seats that drive enterprise value for your exit. Because these three clerks are stellar core values fits, you must use your Accountability Chart to transition them from administrative processors to proactive protectors of cash flow.

Start by deleting the old accounts receivable clerk seats from your chart. Do not try to modify them or keep them on life support. Next, design a new seat, such as Client Retention and Revenue Recovery.

The roles for this new seat must focus on activities that software cannot easily replicate. For example, their new roles might include resolving complex billing disputes, building relationships with high-value accounts, and proactively identifying clients at risk of churning.

Once the new seat is structured, run each clerk through the GWC™ filter. Do they truly understand this new relationship-driven role? Do they want the challenge of proactive problem-solving, or do they prefer repetitive data entry? Do they have the emotional intelligence and communication capacity to succeed?

If they pass the GWC™ test, place them in the new seats. If any of them fail because they prefer quiet back-office tasks, you must make the hard right-person, wrong-seat call. Keeping a person in a seat they cannot GWC™ out of sentimentality will inflate your payroll and stall your operational efficiency just as you are preparing the business for a clean sale.