A system briefing session is a measure of education and of getting the introduced system to take root in daily use. It is a necessary activity, but no matter how many briefing sessions are held, the amount of work required by the application procedure itself does not change, so it does not lead directly to the purpose of improving efficiency. Also, unless it is first decided what will be automated in order to improve efficiency, the content to be explained cannot be fixed either, so as something to address with priority it belongs to a later stage. Nor can the necessity of targeting all employees, including people who have nothing to do with transportation expense applications, be derived from this purpose.
×Incorrectイ
Introducing the system as cheaply as possible is the answer when the purpose is set to “cost reduction.” The purpose Mr. A set out here is “improving the efficiency of application procedures,” so the evaluation criterion is off the mark. If anything, giving top priority to low cost risks choosing a product that lacks a function indispensable to efficiency, such as automatic setting of the amount, and thus failing to achieve the purpose itself. Using commercially available software may be considered as one possible means of realization, but it is not the priority issue.
×Incorrectウ
Notifying by email the date on which transportation expenses will be paid is a notification task that comes after the application has been completed. None of the work in which the applicant prepares the contents of the application is reduced, so it does not connect to improving the efficiency of application procedures. Making the payment date known has some meaning as an operational refinement, but its contribution to the stated purpose is small, so it cannot be chosen as something to address with priority.
○エ
正解The correct answer is エ. The single criterion in this question is the purpose Mr. A set out — “improving the efficiency of application procedures” — that is, whether the measure reduces the effort and time that a person applying for transportation expenses spends on the application procedure itself. Choice エ means introducing a function that, once the route section used (from where to where the person traveled) is entered, automatically sets the amount corresponding to that section (the transportation expense to be paid), and then advancing that automation step by step. Until now the applicant had to look up the fare for each line and copy the figure into the amount field, and this was the part of the application work that took the most time and was the most prone to writing mistakes. Choice エ hands that very work over to the machine, so it acts directly on the stated purpose. In general, once the amount is determined automatically, the returns and resubmissions caused by miswriting also decrease, and the burden on the people who check the contents becomes smaller. When thinking about priority, we follow the basic idea of the planning process — start with the measure that contributes most directly to the stated purpose — and choose エ.
ここがポイント
When introducing a system, first set the purpose, and start with the measure that contributes most directly to that purpose (the way of thinking of the planning process). If the purpose is “improving the efficiency of application procedures,” a function that automates manual entry and calculation becomes the top priority.
Minimizing cost, providing education and briefing sessions, and improving the means of communication are all generally beneficial, but a measure that does not match the stated purpose (that is, the evaluation criterion) drops in priority. Sorting out the choices by whether they connect directly to the stated purpose is how to solve this kind of question.