Foreign branches management

Planning tasks to maintain overseas branches and representative offices
Overseas department coordinates and streamlines activities of the foreign branches and representative offices of the company, providing a centralized maintenance and advice. The function of foreign branches management ensures consistency in the company's international activities, management of financial flows and maintenance of overseas corporate policy and its execution. The foreign branches coordinator is responsible for controlling and assessing work of overseas subsidiaries and offices. His main tasks are to conduct the review activities of each foreign branch. An example of these tasks is shown below:

• monitor tasks and assess productivity of each employee in the foreign division
• oversee local projects and check schedules
• evaluate compliance with corporate policies and procedures
• review financial statement and assess the adequacy of the financial condition
• identify opportunities for workflow improvement in the foreign branches

This example of core tasks of the foreign branches coordinator can be effectively planned and performed by using VIP Task Manager. The branches coordinator can use Calendar view to create and schedule to-do lists that help plan activities of the overseas divisions. For example, in the task group 'Overseas projects' he can create the task checklist that allows step by step planning and monitoring of the projects of overseas branches. Task reminder will help keep the task planning on schedule. Calendar view displays the tasks in daily, weekly and monthly modes, making it easier to plan short-term (one week or one month) and long-term (quarter or even year) projects.

Tracking foreign projects
The head office of the company needs to be sure that overseas subsidiaries do their jobs in compliance with corporate policy and established plans. The first and primary task of the foreign branches coordinator is to monitor and track projects and tasks of the employees in the foreign branches. Task tracking and project monitoring is much easier by using VIP Task Manager. The software allows to track several overseas projects at one time, as it stores all tasks of the foreign divisions in common database file which is accessible by the employees in any subsidiary. The branches coordinator can connect to the overseas branches database through Internet connection and track all ongoing activities in real-time mode. The Filter panel makes task and project tracking easier. For example, to track projects of European division of the company, the branches coordinator can apply the filter by the folder 'European division' in Task Tree view. Then, all European projects will be displayed in Task Tree view. If the foreign branches coordinator needs to see only ongoing tasks in the projects, he can apply the filter by status 'In Progress'. The Filter panel also allows to filter tasks by such parameters as Assignment, Priority, Time Left, Dated Completed, and other. For better usability the branches coordinator can save filter settings to profiles, for example 'All ongoing foreign projects' profile, and raise it any time.

Measuring performance and getting reports
Performance measurement and task reporting are the ways to determine whether an overseas project has been successfully completed. To measure performance, the foreign branches coordinator can use special indicators (so called KPI - key performance indicators) and then build a summary report that will include the used KPI. In VIP Task Manager such functionality is available. The foreign branches coordinator can use Custom Field feature to build and apply key performance indicators per task and project. The software allows to sum up the indicators and define min/max/average values.

For example, to define average costs per task in the project of European division, the foreign branches coordinator can create the custom field 'Costs' in which the division's employees will enter real costs per task as far as the project runs. At the end of the project the foreign branches coordinator can calculate the average project costs. The average value will be displayed on the level of the task group 'European division' (as shown on screen shot). To include this KPI in a short status report, the foreign branches coordinator can use Report Builder in VIP Task Manager. This reporting tool allows to create HTML, text, visual and Excel format reports.

1. Overseas Department Staff
2. Overseas department functions and workflow
3. Negotiations and partnership management
4. Export and import operations support
5. >> Foreign branches management