2012年4月14日 星期六

W11 - Redesign Principles(2)

Source / Reference:
1) El Sawy's Redesign Principles and Tactics

Subject:
In Lect 11 -  Redesign Principles(2)
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Response:

Introduction
In the last blog post, a detailed analysis of the principles and tactics associated with restructuring and informating the process have been given. In this post, the analysis will continue on principles and tactics about minding the process.

Minding - Changing knowledge management around the process.
Principle #8: Analyze and Synthesize
        Enhance the interactive analysis & synthesis capabilities around a process to generate value added.
        -       Provide “what-if” capabilities to analyze decision options
        -       Provide “slice and dice” data analysis capabilities that detect patterns
        -       Provide intelligent integration capabilities across multiple information sources

Knowledge management is important to every business. There are several steps in the transformation of knowledge. Firstly, unstructured data is collected by several means such as surveying, daily operation and so on. Then the data will transform into information through structuring and analyzing. Finally, the structured information will become knowledge by more comprehensive analysis, synthesize and consolidating. Throughout the transformation process, analysis is the most important step as it allows firm to explore and discover useful and reusable knowledge from the data and information. 

One of the examples adopting this principle is Merrill Lynch, which is a financial management and advisory. The company provides "what-if" capabilities for customers to analyze decision options so that they can have a better understanding on the effect and risk of the actions taken. Also, the company not only makes use of the knowledge developed by itself but also synthesize the global data from the environment to help customers to explore the best investment plan.


    

Principle #9: Connect, Collect & Create
        Capture intelligent & reusable knowledge around the process through all who touch it.
        -       Define procedures to collect this knowledge
        -       Create physical/virtual spaces for storing this knowledge

Knowledge is not built in one day but accumulated day and day. There must be a method to collect intelligent and reusable knowledge around the process. Microsoft has been an expert in this area. For example, for any software product provided by Microsoft, when there is a special problem, the software will ask the user to report the problem. This is a kind of capturing useful knowledge. Besides, Microsoft also developed FAQ for each product. The FAQ consists of diverse problems and solutions which can help users to tackle frequently appear problems.


Principle #10: Personalize
        Make the process intimate with the preferences and habits of participants.
        -       Learn preferences of customers and doers of the process through profiling
        -       Insert business rules that are triggered by personal profiles
        -       Use collaborative filtering techniques
        -       Keep track of personal process execution habits

Nowadays, people are more concerned about personalization. Providing personalized product or service is the key factor to achieve high customer satisfaction. One of the businesses applying this principle is Walmart. In Walmart's online purchasing website, there are several customized functions provided. Firstly, customers are required to create an account if they want to buy something through this website. This creates a profile for every unique customer. When a customer views or buys some products, all those records will be stored. This allows Walmart to analyze the data and determine their purchasing patterns. Walmart also provides a search engine which allows customers to search a specific product through different criteria such as price, color or brand. 

Besides, when a customer views the detail of an item, there will a column showing the recommended products which are viewed by other users also. This function shows that Walmart is trying to provide personalized service to each customer. On the other hand, highly personalized service can also improve customer satisfaction and strengthen customer intimacy. This may certainly increase customer loyalty and thus increase the profits. 




Conclusion
Minding the process provides opportunities for firms to improve their business process as it allows firms to capture, store and analyze the knowledge throughout the process. Firms can make use of the accumulated knowledge to facilitate the process. Therefore, it is important for firms to develop a system to capture intelligent knowledge and establish a repository to store that knowledge. 

1 則留言:

  1. - good improvement, More discussion on the examples than the last blog post
    - For your consideration: a proper case study which integrates all the BPR principles-tactics could be a good conclusion of BPR course, would it be?
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    Mark: high average

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