Method
The Cycle Map
A practical sequence for turning purchase orders, receipts, and invoice exceptions into a stage picture your steering group can debate.
Five stages we usually keep
Request, approve, release, receive, settle. Teams may rename them; we resist adding more than five on the first map so dwell time stays comparable.
Agree the glossary
Sit with buyers and AP to lock stage names and what counts as entering or leaving each stage. Write the glossary on a single page and keep it fixed for the engagement.
Pull a bounded sample
Thirty to fifty orders from one category family beat an entire ledger. Incomplete timestamps are noted rather than invented.
Interview the handoffs
Ask requesting departments, buyers, warehouse, and AP where work waits. Holiday patterns and batch-scan habits often explain the long bars.
Draw the strip
Median dwell and high-dwell callouts sit on one horizontal path. Exception notes name the stage, the sample size, and a suspected cause.
Brief with owners
Leadership sees the map, then a short action brief with space for owners. Unfinished items roll into a quarterly briefing if you continue.
Ready for a diagnostic
The Cycle Map method is the backbone of our Procurement Cycle Diagnostic. If you already have a glossary, we can start closer to sampling.