Most organisations (not only commercial ones) sprout all kinds of auxiliary divisions/sectors/departments/administrations as they grow in size – those with imposing names and an unclear purpose.

For instance, what does a hypothetical Strategic Analysis Department do?
​Perhaps strategic analysis?
And what’s the result of it?
Where can we touch the said ‘analysis’? Tons of pulp about Queen Victoria are dismissed, anyway, sites like referat.ru abound in perfectly free abstracts on such matters.

But even if we take this flow of truisms (at best) as a practical result, the next question would be, ‘How can we use it in a certain entity’s work?’

Ultima Consulting notes: An organizational Occam’s Razor application that is also a test-detector for uselessness: if an employee’s/department’s results cannot be measured in quantity, here is a useless eater in vivo. Kill him with fire. Quickly and harshly.

The above-mentioned is what applies to lazybones of the parasytic type. As for symbiotic lazybones (whose work is measurable and even useful, BUT can be done by a computer without loss of quality and functionality and, again, at no cost), we wrote about them previously, right here.

Until as late as the early 19th century, the spontaneous generation of life was a mainstream scientific theory. Tellingly, it was illustrated with less than lovely members of the animal kingdom, while a mixture of dirt and rotting organic matter was recognized as the best nutrient medium.

Here is a medieval recipe for obtaining mice: put dirty underwear into an open jar and mix it with wheat. A mouse will be ready in approximately 20 days.

The life spontaneous generation theory that was undisputed for 95% of mankind’s known history in the end was ultimately disproved.

The same can be said about the corporate useless mouths: they do not appear out of thin air. The nutrient medium for them is a low level of business process standardization, wrong or no allocation of authority and liability, and management not critical of the company’s costs. And many more trifles.
But it is incompetent management what fertilizes the chaos. Basically, incompetent management is a necessary and with the passage of time, sufficient condition for each of the above components of the nutrient medium as well.

But theories are hard and cold; let’s return to real life. Here is the example of a major retailer company and an extract from correspondence between BA, warehouse manager, and James, working for our implementing partner:

[17:47:08] James: Hi! Who in your company generally decides where new goods will be stored?
[17:47:32] BA: The Goods Supply Division.
[17:48:30] James: And what else does that division do?
[17:49:34] BA: Forms auto orders to suppliers, conducts sales analysis, approvals, and defines goods matrices.
[17:49:56] BA: In general, all the matters concerning the supply of goods to shops.
[17:53:52] James: And how many employees work at that division?
[17:53:55] James: I mean, approximately?
[17:54:23] BA: Ten

Analysis, approvals, defines, forms... — the very terms reek of bureaucratic formalin of uselessness. An inquisitive reader may personally check this list of human activities against the Ultima Consulting parasitic uselessness test.

Let’s take a closer look.

—"Conducts sales analysis". Pardon? e-Trade conducts all possible analysis with just one button click. Including the calculation of the procurers’ needs. And where the system cannot really provide some ‘analysis’, will ten Excel and abacus users be able to cope with such a terrifying task?

—"Forms auto orders to suppliers". Forgive our curiosity, but why ‘form’ auto orders to suppliers at all if they are "auto"? It takes just five minutes to set up a robot that will create those documents as scheduled.

—"Defines goods matrices"? In a client-oriented (=profitable) company, its goods matrices are defined by demand only. In turn,for analyzing demand for mass sales items there is no better measure than their popularity in the respective Internet aggregators. Moreover, those popularity matrices (i.e. what we must sell) are calculated by e-Trade in a fully automated fashion for every region.
But still, following the classical Soviet Bureaucratic paradigm, a dozen specially hired lazybones of more than disputable qualification (and even more disputable level of motivation) purpot to know much better what the customers need.

— you say it addresses "all the matters concerning the supply of goods to shops"? That’s imposing! However, Comrades, what matters can there be except for what goods, how many and to which shops to send? None. And with the above-listed ones Ultimate e-Trade can cope far better than those ten useless guys.
And even if there were such questions (whose very existence testify, BTW, to an internal mess that cannot certainly be cured by hiring extra parasites), perhaps the shops would be in a better position to solve them on their own? Being at the forefront and generally closer to the consumer.

Of course these are just rhetorical questions.

Now for ‘pointing to where the goods will lie at the warehouse’. This is often a non-trivial task, especially where there are many goods items of different types. Ten ‘pointing’ personnel from the above example
will cost you some seven million rubles annually. Is it too much or too little? This is a subjective question, ask your shareholders.

Muchacha.ru is a new (and consequently poor and terribly thrifty) Internet shop of ladies’ apparel, took a different road. They divided their goods mix into groups according to the items’ dimensions and assigned storage cells to each group — which items could be stored where. The system uses incoming goods’ data to
determine on its own where the goods will be laid. No one allots space to goods items or even thinks about it. That is, no spongers are needed to distribute the goods, either.

The moral of this story is: use the anti-sponging features of Ultimate e-Trade properly, Comrades!