goal achievement derived by the recognition of...

European, Mediterranean & Middle Eastern Conference on Information Systems 2012 (EMCIS2012) June 7-8, Munich, Germany

Fady and Abd El Aziz 391

Goal Achievement Derived by the Recognition of Essential Business Units in the Industry: The Case of INCOM

GOAL ACHIEVEMENT DERIVED BY THE RECOGNITION OF ESSENTIAL

BUSINESS UNITS IN THE INDUSTRY: THE CASE OF INCOM

Rasha Fady, Department of International trade, Faculty of International Trade and

Logistics, Arab Academy for Science and Technology & Maritime Transport,

Alexandria, Egypt.

Rasha Abd El Aziz, Department of Business Information Systems, College of

Management & Technology, Arab Academy for Science and Technology & Maritime

Transport, Alexandria, Egypt

[email protected]

Abstract

Goal achievement is an important issue for the success of any organisation. For an

organisation to successfully set up its plans, business processes have to be clear enough to

managers. It was seen that both business process modelling and improvement complement

and reinforce one another and that improving business processes is vital for planning and

goal achievement. This is particularly important in competitive markets, where building

and maintaining a good customer relationship is essential to long-term business survival.

Accordingly, organisational goals should include Customer Relationship Management.

Thus, the main subject of the research is to examine how an organisation can determine its

goals and plan to better satisfy their customers. In order to get a deeper insight, seven key

decision makers at the case study organisation have been interviewed. Riva technique was

used to analyse and improve the CRM process.

It was found out that modelling the systems process should be among the first steps to

problem solution in order to better understand the current activities and accordingly detect,

adjust and improve any inefficiency that may cause customers to switch to other service

providers. Business process modelling seems to a suitable vehicle to start with; as it will

help decision makers easily and clearly find out the improvements required in each

business area in general and each process in particular. The model can help managers

whether fully aware of the system or newly introduced to it in planning, measuring

performance and evaluating employees upon a concrete basis. Business Process

Improvement can help identify whether employees realize the existence of a problem or are

just driven by paper work regardless of their performance or results achieved. The

improved system together with the way to improve, provide a roadmap for other

organisations in similar circumstances.

Keywords: Process Improvement, Goal Determination, Process Modelling.

1. INTRODUCTION

Goals are resolutions to achieve a desired result, where they provide a clear understanding

of what the company is striving to accomplish based on the organisational mission and

strategic objectives. Successful companies set goals in every business plan and become a

regular part of ongoing business operations. Plans can help organisations identify what it

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needs to achieve on a regular basis. Accordingly, most businesses require their employees

to meet targets, upon which employees’ performance could be evaluated. Targets should

adhere with the organisational strategic plans to provide better integration and consistency

with the organisational mission. They also need to be clear enough for employees in order

to make it easy for them to achieve the organisational goals.

Planning in particular often receives less attention from small business managers than

they should. One way to more effectively fulfil this management function is through

effective goal setting. The success of a business will depend on its long-range goals for

sales, profits, competitive position, development of personnel and industrial relations. For

an organisation to efficiently and effectively identify and set-up its plans and goals, an

illustration of its business processes and the detailed activities within each process need to

be clearly identified (Lucey, 2005). Thus, modelling business processes is necessary to

understand the nature of a business and to evaluate the carried activities associated with

each process to achieve its goals. This is particularly clear where an organisation might

produce an efficient output but yet, not the one needed to achieve its goals. Therefore,

organisational mission, strategic objectives, strategic planning, and goal achievement

need to be closely tied to Business Process Modelling and Improvement.

Business process management (BPM) mainly focuses on the management of

organisational business processes and the flow of work and information. It encompasses

different business process modelling techniques that can simplify the understanding of the

nature of business. Business Process Improvement (BPI) helps organisations identify

malfunctioning business processes and measure their performance for better

improvement. Business processes need to be revised and improved based on the

organisational strategic objectives, in order to achieve the organisational goals. In this

way, employees will have a better chance to realise their own roles, set plans and put

targets to achieve on their day to day activities rather than being overloaded by paper

work that normally keeps them unaware of the actual organisational vision.

Accordingly, the aim of the current study is to examine how the organisational strategic

objectives and plans are related to the organisational business processes. The question is

whether business process modelling and improvements are essential for setting,

achieving, and evaluating organisational plans. The paper starts with a brief introduction

followed by the review of literature about CRM, approaches to process modelling, six

sigma technique, and the Riva technique used in the current study. Then, the research

design is illustrated followed by a section on the analysis of INCOM Egypt. After that a

clear understanding of the case study is overviewed, having a separate section on

improved UOW diagram, and the role activity diagram. Finally a conclusion section

shows the research findings and recommendations.

2. LITERATURE REVIEW

Organizations that do not take the time to develop missions are often ineffective. A

mission statement explains why the organization exists and what business they are in. It

also states what the organization does currently and sets parameters for what it does not

do. It is the base upon which organisational goals and objectives are set for planning and

scheduling (Sadler, 2003), and has been argued to lead to better (Sidhu, 2003). The vision

statement articulates the future of the organization and the community that it serves, and




implies the work that still needs to be accomplished. Accordingly the vision statement

gives credibility and motivation to the mission statement (Martins and Terblanche, 2003).

It might be worthless to construct a well structured and detailed plan without considering

the unexpected events while putting it into action. This is highlighted where an

organization may fail to follow a plan due to unclear goals. A key success factor to

planning and goal achievement is the availability of systems, people, technology and

external market. Thus, planning and goal achievement are both tied to management;

where under a good management organisational constituents can function independently

(Longenecker, et al., 2009). But in order to for management to do a good job,

organisational goals need to be clear enough to set up an objective and realistic plan.

Entrepreneurs cannot realise the required targets that are compatible with the

organisational goals and objectives without having a comprehensible and concise picture

of the organisational processes and its detailed activities that will enhance their vision

while planning and setting up targets, and thus achieve the organisational goals easily.

One of the most important goals of any organisation is increasing sales, which is directly

related to customers. Therefore, customer service or customer relationship management is

a matter that requires special consideration while setting up goals and plans.

Organisations need to attract, acquire, and retain customers. This could be approached

using a good CRM (Anderson, and Carol Kerr, 2002). Therefore, more explanation about

CRM and how business process modelling and improvements can help in identifying

precise plans to achieve the organisational goals will be shown in this study.

2.1 Customer Relationship Management

Technology has enabled organisations develop good customer relationship by linking

front end processes (such as sales, marketing and pricing) with back end processes (such

as finance, shopping and human resources). Since the introduction of CRM, it has been

defined differently with a wide variety of focuses ranging from a shallow definition such

as just establishing a call center, having a web-presence for communicating with

customers to mining a customer data warehouse. This makes it difficult for managers to

understand how functional areas interact with the CRM (Ramsey, 2003).

In 2000, Handel has defined CRM as the process of acquiring, retaining and growing

profitable customers. Massey has also defined CRM as attracting, developing and

maintaining profitable customers over time (Massey, 2001).

Although a number of studies (Berry, 1983, 1995, 2002; Crosby et al., 2001; Dwyer et al.,

1987; Hart and Johnson, 1999; Morgan and Hunt, 1994; Palmer, 2000; Sheth and

Parvatiyar, 1995) have tried to understand the importance of cooperative and

collaborative relationships between buyers and sellers, there is still no consensus on the

CRM definition. CRM and relationship marketing have almost been used interchangeably

in (Parvatiyar and Sheth, 2000). By broadening the scope of relationship marketing and

viewing it in a comprehensive management and social context, Gummesson (2002) has

defined it as “marketing based on relationships.”




To sum up, it seems that CRM is a critical success factor for business performance.

Accordingly, firms wishing to improve their relationships with customers need constantly

to monitor their behaviour and internal processes (Leo, et al, 2004).

2.2 Approaches to Process Modelling

Early approaches to process modelling tend to treat processes as fixed, routine, and

repeatable detailed activities. A number of BPM approaches try to make the performance

faster and cheaper, and seek to achieve this either as a radical overhaul or by instituting an

organisational system of continuous improvement. Such techniques include Total Quality

Management (TQM), Business Process Reengineering (BPR) and Six Sigma (Verma,

2009). The objective of TQM is to achieve process improvement using cross-functional

teams, scientific methods and employee involvement, to produce a more process-centric

organisation in which improvements are made on incremental basis. In BPR the objective

is to derive an organisation's business processes from its business vision and objectives,

and to implement a suite of measurable processes top down. BPR exercises often involve

major changes to organisational structure and IT infrastructure.

Reports produced from data recorded about processes help in monitoring process

performance. Automated processes in particular provide online real-time information in a

systematic way. In 1993, Davenport complained that, in general, computer applications

are not designed to support business processes, but are rather designed to process

information. He believes that the systems analyst and business executives should analyse

the business processes before commissioning a computer application. He introduced a

distinction between process improvement and process innovation. While process

improvement is a bottom-up technique that relies on incremental changes which need to

be worked out in detail and to be understandable by lower level employees, process

innovation is more top-down.

Once all the processes in any organisation have been mapped, process improvement can

be used to improve small individual processes while process innovation is used to bring in

new broader processes that change more radically the way the organisation works

(Davenport, 1993). Therefore, business process modelling could be considered a tool

needed for both process improvement and information technology applications.

There are a number of modelling methods such as Business Process Modelling Notation

(BPMN) which could be used for business process modelling, but you will need to

complement it with additional elements. It leverages the typical flow-chart diagramming

that business people are familiar with and is rather confusing. For instance, each pool has

its own start and end processes as well as process flow lines. If there is interaction across

the pools then a message flow is used. Most business people get overwhelmed with the

additional flow lines and have trouble following the overall process path.

Unified Modelling Language (UML) on the other hand is a comprehensive modelling

standard for describing software designs. Although it helps bridge the gap between the

business-friendly solution design and detailed design of software systems, it still takes a

lot of time to keep the diagram reasonable and synchronized with the actual code. UML

diagrams are only appropriate if the organization size can manage them. You cannot

represent every condition in a sequence diagram. It's impossible if you want to deliver.

Finally a good UML software costs money and it takes quite a while to properly master it.




2.2.1 Six Sigma Technique

Globalization and instant access to information, products and services have changed the

way customers conduct business. The competitive environment pressures organisations to

please their customers and perhaps find new ways to exceed their expectations. This is

why Six Sigma technique could be used in problem solving that assist in process

improvement. It helps organisations focus on developing and delivering near-perfect

products and services.

Sigma is a statistical term that measures how far a given process deviates from perfection.

The central idea behind Six Sigma is that if you can measure how many “defects” you

have in a process, you can systematically figure out how to eliminate them and get as

close to “zero defects” as possible. One of the Six sigma basics is DMAIC: Define,

Measure, Analyse, Improve, and Control. They are all built on business processes that

need to be defined at first. Knowing that each process has inputs and outputs, one could

be able to direct inputs in order to control outputs. Thus, process mapping is one way to

figure out how business processes could be lined out for improvement (Roderick et al.,

2008).

Six Sigma is narrower in scope than TQM or BPR and uses statistical techniques to focus

on those parts of processes where the problems are occurring, to identify areas for

improvement. One of the Six sigma basics is DMAIC: Define, Measure, Analyse,

Improve, and Control. They are all built on business processes that need to be defined at

first. Thus, process mapping is one way to figure out how business processes could be

lined out for improvement (Roderick et al., 2008).

2.3 Riva Technique

Riva method is another technique used for process modelling that focuses on the

management of business entities through the actions and interactions of different roles. It

combines two forms of diagramming, process architecture diagramming and role activity

diagramming (Fady and Abd El Aziz, 2011). While a process architecture diagram shows

several or all of the business processes in an organisation, and how they relate to one

another, role activity diagram shows, for a single process, the activities within roles and

their interactions.

It has been selected for process modelling as it seeks to explore the deeper reaches of the

business. It focuses on understanding and designing business processes derived from

essential business entities. It puts roles, actions and interactions at the centre of its

detailed analysis rather than data items or process logic, and it offers a high-level,

architectural level of analysis to supplement the lower level analysis of business

processes. It does not start from a position of a commitment to existing work practices

and technology base, but rather seeks to understand those in terms of what the business is

about and trying to do (Ould, 2005).

The more recent development of BPM systems (Weske, 2007), combines a more dynamic

understanding of processes as arising out of interactions between different roles, a desire

for process agility, and an interest in automating business actions and interactions. The

purpose of a BMP and BPI is to facilitate the work done by a group of people who carry

out a certain process. It may do this by orchestrating and supporting the work flow

between the members of the work team, or by executing some actions itself from code.




The aim of BPM systems is to enhance an organisation’s ability to define and evaluate its

processes and modify them accordingly; in principle they offer greater flexibility than

structured systems, where work have to be re-organised to fit the demands of the

computer system.

Riva method also supports improvements that might be performed on a short-term trial

basis and then consolidated if they appear to support long-term objectives. Process models

produced using Riva provide a basis for process analysis and improvement. Process

improvements might be incremental that are normally applied at the detailed process level

Role Activity Diagram (RAD), while radical improvements are more likely to be applied

on the higher architectural level (Ould, 2005).

There are three main kinds of process improvement in Ould’s view: restructuring roles

and interactions, flow-wise improvements, and point-wise improvements. In restructuring

roles and interactions, changes are made to the actions in a role or to interactions between

roles. Roles and interactions might also be removed or combined. In flow-wise

improvements, the flow of activities within a process, or between processes in the process

architecture, is rerouted, simplified, or streamlined. In point-wise improvements,

modifications are made at particular points in the diagram such as actions, or case

processes, to enhance efficiency or effectiveness, in order to gain cost reduction or shorter

cycle time.

3. RESEARCH DESIGN

In order to better understand the problem at hand, and in an attempt to investigate and

analyse the case organisation from the inside, identify the malfunctioning, or even

missing processes and propose an improved view of the business process, a number of

research methods were used. As an initial step to understand the current situation in

Incom Egypt, semi-structured interviews were designed and conducted with 7 key

decision makers, namely the organisation’s President, Vice president, Sales head of

department, and 4 senior staff members at different departments. Having the interview

data interpretively analysed, a clear picture of the processes became a logical sequence to

Then, as BPI rely on a clear picture of the business processes so that processes could be

easily identified, analysed, measured and improved, Riva technique was used for

modelling the business processes. Improvements afterwards could be applied and

controlled wherever they are found to be essential.

4. INCOM EGYPT ANALYSIS

Egypt's industrial sector has undergone major reforms since 1991, showing clear steps

towards privatizing and restructuring state owned enterprises. This has led the way for

private organisations such as Incom Egypt to launch their own business. Incom Egypt

Company is a subsidiary of Incom (America), Inc that was first established in 1994. It is a

manufacturer of custom wire, harness assemblies, flexible building cables, power supply

cords and plastic spools. The company serves both the local and international market.

Incom Egypt provides a wide range of products, some of which are Wires, Cables, Wire

Harness Assemblies, Power Supply Cords, and Plastic Spools. INCOM Egypt products

are certified by Underwriters Laboratories (UL) and SASO and are strictly tested in




compliance to their standards. Additional compliance testing is preformed where other

certifications are required such as BS/IEC/CSA/VDE and CE. INCOM has a set of

traditional and core activities, some of which are Sales, Research and Development,

Prototyping, Assembly, Molding, Quality Control, and Technical recognitions.

4.1 Incom Overviewed from those interviewed

From the interviews with different departments in Incom Egypt at different managerial

levels it was observed that, commercial process combines both the internal and external

activities performed to service the customer. Customers are always demanding service

either tangible or intangible. Within the same process, different departments normally

work together in order to achieve the process success both for customers and the

organisation. Therefore, internal and external objectives in this process are unbreakable.

Internally, from the company's side it is important to focus on sales maximization, cost

reduction especially in production, maintenance and customer complaints, and

collections. However, externally the focus is on external markets, customer service and

the level of customer satisfaction.

Accordingly, in order for Incom Egypt to survive the fierce competition, it must cover its

cost, expand their sales volume, customer base, generate more profit and improve their

business processes. The commercial process combines different departments as will be

shown later in the RAD of the commercial process in Section 4.3.

Upon receiving basic specifications and / or drawings, Incom develops recommendations

and various options to suit customer requirements. Prototypes are representative samples

of how a product would look like when built. With wire manufacturing and molding

processing combined under the same roof, Incom supplies complete wire harnesses which

consists of cordsets / power supply cords, wire assemblies, and molded components. All

Incom products are tested to comply with the required standards. Products are shipped

and labelled per individual customer requirement, and recognition of products from other

countries can be worked out upon customer request. Thus, that Incom has three factories

(cables and wires, wire harness assemblies and power supply cord) dealing together.

4.2 Improved UOW diagram in CRM

Recalling the UOW diagram for Income Egypt from a previous paper (Fady and Abd El

Aziz, 2012), it was clear that some improvements need to be applied at the hierarchical

level in the UOW model and the second cut process architecture. Regarding the UOW

model the suggested changes are as follows:

1. Change the title of the 'CRM' business entity to be 'Commercial'. This will provide

a wider scope that reflects the real functions and activities that are performed in

the process as its functions are wider in scope than just managing the relationship

with customers.

2. Change the title of the 'Cost' business entity to be 'Price'. Since pricing is not just

to add a certain percentage on the cost in order to compute the profit and deliver

the price that could then be adjusted with the customer and according to the

market conditions, therefore, the price process will reflect the need to identify how




pricing is performed based on the cost and other variables before changes to price

are applied.

commercial

Sample

Changes

to sample

priceChanges

to price

Generates (1:1)

Involves (1:1)

Generates (1:M)

Generates (1:M)

Plan

Generates (1:M)

Q.C.

Generates (1:M)

Purchase

Generates (1:M)

Changes

to plan

Generates (1:M)

Product

Generates (1:M)

Scrap

Generates (1:M)Inventory

Generates (1:M)

Customs

Generates (1:M)

Packing

Generates (1:1)

Generates (1:1)

ShippingGenerates (1:M)

Generates (1:M)

Finance

Generates (1:M)

Generates (1:1)

UOW diagram for Incomegypt

Generates (1:M)

Generates (1:1)

Generates (1:1)

Generates (1:1) Generates (1:1)

Generates (1:1)

Generates (1:1)

Generates (1:1)

3 April 2011

Figure 1. UOW of Incom Egypt

4.2.1 Improved second cut process architecture in CRM

Some changes were found to be essential in the second cut architecture. The changes are

not limited to the commercial process; however, other changes in the flow of work

between processes of the entire model had also taken place. The changes that took place

are as follows:

1. Change the title of the 'Handle a CRM' process to be 'Handle a commercial' process.

2. Change the title of the 'Handle a cost' process to be 'Handle a price' process.

3. Add deliver from the 'Handle a customs' process to the 'Handle a commercial' process.

4. Add deliver from the 'Handle a shipping' process to the 'Handle a commercial'

process.

5. Add deliver from the 'Handle a QC' process to the 'Handle a commercial' process.




Second Cut Process Architecture

(after improvements)

Handle a

commercial start

Handle a

sample

deliver

Handle a

change to

sample

start

deliver

Handle a

price

start

deliver

Handle a

change to

price

start

deliver

Manage the

flow of

purchases

request

Handle a

purchasestart

deliver

Handle a

plan

start

deliver

Handle a

customs

start

deliver

Mange the

flow of

customs

requestrequest

deliver

request

deliver

Handle a

shipping

start

deliver

start

deliver

Handle a

change to

plan

start

deliver

Handle a

product

startdeliver

Handle a

Q.C.

start

deliver

Handle a

packing

start

deliver

Handle a

scrapstart

deliver

Handle an

inventory

request

deliver

Manage the

flow of

inventory

start

request

deliver

request

deliver

request

deliver

Manage the

flow of

finance

request

Handle a

finance

start

deliver

request

deliver

start

deliver

request

request

deliver

request

deliver

deliver

start

deliver

start

deliver

deliver

Figure 2. Second-cut Process Architecture after being improved.

4.3 The Commercial process RAD

The RAD technique is useful in showing how different activities are taking place

simultaneously. Following each thread, one can understand the sequence of activities on

the same thread. However, different threads in the same diagram means that they are

performed simultaneously. Recall that each case process looks after the case from the

time it arrives to the organisation until it leaves; this indicates that different threads show

how the case is dealt with at different stages by different roles. Therefore, the location of

different threads doesn't mean a sequence. Also each UOW deals with many cases and

therefore many instances are handled in each case process.

In the commercial process (see figure 3), several departments are interacting together in

order to arrive to a certain target or goal. The main outcomes of this process are bringing

sales orders to the organisation and follow them until they are delivered out of the

company to the customers. While doing so, other processes are also working in parallel

from the time a sales order is put into operation until it is delivered out as a finished

product. The interviewees stated that it is the responsibility of the marketing department

to penetrate new markets by applying different marketing strategies, setting up a plan to

attract customers and dispatching them to the customer service. Then, the CEO adjusts the

plan with the marketing manager.

Interviewees believe that the customer service department is responsible for dealing with

all customers and other internal departments in order to put the sales order in operation;

especially as they are the customers’ representative in the company. Their tasks involve

the follow up of new sales orders, in-process orders, customers’ inquiries, and the




delivery of goods. The customer service department needs to check with the technical

department the product specifications and with the pricing department to send and

negotiate quotations. Once the product is in operation, the customs and the sales

departments start making their needed actions for delivery. While the product is in

process they always follow-up the sales order status with other departments until the

product is delivered to the customer. They are also responsible to contact customers for

money collection.

The sales department is another department that is responsible for implementing the sales

plan received from the financial department. In this department, competitor prices are

checked and compared to the company's prices. The sales orders are received from the

customer service to be put into operation. Then the sales department follows the orders in

operation until they are finished and requests delivery from the concerned departments.

On daily basis, the sales department checks the daily production with the planning

department and compares the actual production rate to the planned, then delivers a status

report to the financial department in order to take the correct decisions with the CEO. The

sales department has the balance of the delivered goods upon which collections are done.

After understanding the nature of business in the commercial process, it is now easy for a

planner to figure out process plans and targets and relate them to the assigned person.

Outcomes of plans can be easily measured and traced to each activity for corrective

actions. Planning is not effective without having a definite structure of what needs to be

planned. BPM and BPI can effectively aid in planning for goal achievement. Therefore,

both BPM and BPI should take place as an introductory stage for planning. The presence

of BPM and BPI in an organisation could be regarded as a fundamental asset for other

subjects upon which implementation could be done easily.

Other areas where BPM and BPI might also play an important role in are; human resource

management, decision making, process automation and others that can be left for the

future work. The model can help newly hired managers as well as the existing ones in

planning, measuring achievements and evaluating employees.




Handle a Commercial

Customer Service

Supervisor

External

request

Yes No

Is it a new

sample?

Send customer

request

Yes No Is it a new

order?

Technical

Manager

Send

report

Yes No Can we

manufacture?

Pricing

Manager

Request a

price

quote

Send

price

quote

Send

approved

revision

Marketing Manager

Internal

request

Receive

hotline and

e-mail from

customer

Receive

customer

complaint/

inquiry

Planning

and follow-

up Manager

Deliver

customer’s

complaint/inquiry

Sales

Manager

Send

customer

request

Marketing

ManSet

marketing

plan and

policy

Deal

with

target

market

Penetrate

new

markets

Prepare and

attend

exhibitions

Receive

inquiry

from

customer

Dispatch

and

implemt

plan

Prepare

customer’s

filing Is it a new

customer?

Yes No

Create a new

customer account on

the ERP system

International

marketLocal

market

Meet with local

customers and

concerned

parties

Contact

international

customers

and

concerned

bodiesReview

competitors’ prices

and competitive

market

Prepare

monthly

target plan

Review daily

follow-up

report

Request a

price

quote

Request

revision

and

approval

Financial

manager

Send target

financial

sales plan

Beginning

of the year

Compare

actual

production to

monthly and

annual plan

Discuss

customer

complaint

/inquiry

Customs

Shipping

Prepare customer

report summary

from ERP

Send report

summary

Make new

decisions

CEO

Reply to

customer

Negotiate with

customer and

confirm order on

ERP

Send price

quote and

discount

Put new

orders in

operation

QC

Save it on

ERP

Manage

and

organise

collections

Reply to

customer and

save it on

ERP

New

orders are

on ERP

New

orders are

on ERP

New

orders are

on ERP

New

orders are

on ERP

New

orders are

on ERP

Confirm and follow-

up production &

delivery

proceduresFinished

products

in hand

Request

delivery

Save

delivered

products

on ERP

Delivered

products

on ERP

Send actual

sales report

End of month/

three months/

year

Review

report and

make

decision

New

orders in

operation

Products

are ready

for

delivery

Delivery

request in

hand

Delivery

request in

hand

Collection

in

progress

Collection

in

progress

Collection

in

progress

Figure 3. The RAD for the 'Handle a Commercial' Process.




5. CONCLUSION

Based on the undertaken interviews in Income Egypt, it was noticed that although they do

have both a mission and a vision statement, they do not seem to be clear enough nor fully

understandable. Employees do not work on solid strategic plans or given clear targets to

meet. The problem does not only lie in the company's strategic view including its mission

and vision statements, strategic goals, and target plans, but is also in identifying the

organisational processes, their interactions and the roles played by its member staff. As

long as there is no clear business model to identify the detailed activities within each

process and the way they interact with one another, the employees would find it very hard

to figure what their exact jobs are. Not to mention that managers can hardly measure

employees' performance without having a clear idea of their business processes and they

relate and affect one another.

Based on the above mentioned problems, Ould's technique, Riva, can identify a dynamic

rather than a static view of the organisational business processes and their interactions

with the roles involved in each process. Riva method provides a clear business process

model for the entire organisation with suggested improvements for the flow of work,

without which improvement in the organisations were almost impossible. Riva has

enabled the researchers to give an explanation of the business processes in simply and

easily.

After understanding the nature of business in the commercial process, it is now easy to

make process plans and targets and relate them to the responsible person. Outcomes of

plans are easily measured and traced. BPM and BPI can effectively help in planning for

goal achievement, and thus should be introduced early in the planning process.

To sum up, we would say that one of the first steps to problem solution is to model the

systems process in order to better understand the current activities and practices and

accordingly detect, adjust and improve any inefficiency that may cause customers to

switch to other providers of the service. Business process modelling seems to a suitable

vehicle to start with; as it will help decision makers easily and clearly find out the

improvements required in each business area in general and each process in particular.

The model can help managers whether fully aware of the system or newly introduced to it

in planning, measuring performance and evaluating employees upon a concrete basis.

The improved system together with the way to improve, provide a roadmap for other

organisations in similar circumstances.

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