Unit 1 - Office
In Unit 1, we will collect some fundamental data needed to get your Kompass up and running. You can add all requested information to the provided spreadsheet "Kompass_Configuration and Business Processes.xlsx". We will examine three items in this Unit: Offices, Departments and Services.
Offices
Before proceeding to the actual data that needs to be collected, we should define what an office is in this application. Here, an office is defined as an organization in its entirety, not necessarily just a physical office of the organization. Essentially, Kompass views the organization as one office. There are certain occasions where you might decide it’s best to split your operations into more than one offices, but that is generally discouraged due to asynchronization of data between offices. In general, if you respond positively to all questions below, you should only provide information for a single office:
- Should customers and contacts be available to your entire organization?
- Will employees be available in the entire organization (regardless of possibly working in different offices)?
- Do you have global HR policies regarding start/end time and/or breaks?
- Should proposals, invoices, risk assessments, and other documents be the same across offices?
- Do you want your employees/managers to be able to review and access projects throughout the entire organization?
Once you decide whether to use a single office or more than one, we will record fundamental data for your operations. This includes the start and end time of your working day and duration of any breaks (should they contractually exist), time zone, your preferred currency, target gross margin, VAT rate (if any), and standard payment days for invoices.
We should note that gross margin is different than mark-up. Mark-up is most commonly used, where if the cost of your service is $100 and your price is $150, then your mark-up is 50%. It is calculated as:
Mark-up: (150 - 100) / 100 = 0.5 = 50%.
For mark-up, we divide the difference between price and cost by the cost. However, to determine gross margin we divide by the price. You may not immediately recognize gross margin, but it is the percentage typically used on profit & loss accounts. Using the same numbers as above, the gross margin is:
Gross Margin: (150 - 100) / 150 = 0.33 = 33%.
Departments
Most organizations diversify their operations. Even if they do not do this, they might consider doing so in the future. This would allow them to get a better understanding of the areas that perform better than others and assist with strategic planning. Some examples of possible departments, per industry, can be seen below:
| Industry | Possible Departments |
| Geospatial engineering | Topographical, Laser Scanning, SUE, UAV, Construction |
| Legal | Employment Law, Family Law, Commercial Law, Criminal Law |
| Hospital | Medicine, Surgery, Skin, V.D., Plastic, Nuclear |
| Bank | Risk Management, Compliance, Investment Banking, Asset Management |
| Hotel | Front Office, House Keeping, Food and Beverages, Security |
Most of these departments would likely be billable, meaning they are profit centres and their projects will appear in the financial records. Some others (most usually the functions) like R&D, finance, HR, IT, etc. are not billable and will have to be marked as such in the relevant sheet of your spreadsheet.
Also, employees are assigned to departments. Therefore, if you are mostly in the office processing data, you might be in the Processing department. They are what is normally shown on organizational charts and includes staff and often have a manager or head of department. In many companies, Profit & Loss (P&L) will be reported for departments also.
Finally, some departments might have their own set target gross margin. In these cases, target gross margin will override the office gross margin. However, you will be always able to amend your margins when needed.
Services
Services can confuse people, but they actually are quite simple and logical. An organization will most likely have some departments whose budgets, profit & loss accounts, etc. are linked with a particular service. However, departmental works could be split further. Taking the examples above, we will select the first department and present their possible services:
| Industry | Department | Possible Services |
| Geospatial engineering | Topographical | Road surveys, Right of light, Measure building, Hydro |
| Legal | Employment Law | Performance, Disciplines, Mental Health, Contract Law |
| Hospital | Medicine | Logistics, Lab testing, Warehouse, Packaging |
| Bank | Risk Management | ATM transactions, Fraud, Cybersecurity, Security |
| Hotel | Front Office | Recruiting, Decoration, Software development, Human Relationship |
As can be seen, most of the possible services would probably not stand as departments of their own. However, they are closely linked and related with certain departments.
Services are not essential for Kompass and you can skip them if preferred. However, adding them will offer valuable data to assist you in further understanding your organization, priorities, and pain points. Strategic planning based on numerical evidence will be available at a click of a button, and our existing customers agree that services helped them understand their direction and strategy as a company. Even if services are deemed a low priority at the moment for your organization, we would strongly recommend considering adding them in the near future.
Services are not unique, and they can have duplicates so long as they belong to a different department.
For example, the service “Measure Building” might be carried out within both the Topographical or Laser Scanning department. Finally, Services can also have their own gross margins. Those margins (if added) will override both departmental and office gross margins.
Now that you have a better understanding of these terms, we can now proceed to