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NARRATOR: Customer relationship management problems were keeping JK Enterprises from the profitable growth that its shareholders were demanding.
Surveys of the company’s performance repeatedly reflected that they were slow and prone to errors when responding to basic customer requests.
The company’s staff had difficulty understanding company-wide customer information and they struggled to hide increasingly complex and brittle internal processes from their customers and regulators.
One seemingly simple business process that was particularly troublesome for JK enterprises was opening a new customer account. Customers usually established accounts because they wanted to buy something right away. But the latency in this process resulted in a bad first impression or, worse, drove customers to other companies.
Customers filled out complex application forms and had to repeat this process for each of JK’s multiple product lines. JK’s clerical staff frequently made errors when re-keying this information.
The situation was made even more complicated when JK acquired another company. Now there were two legacy systems to contend with and JK reps had no easy way to collaborate. The inability to answer even the most basic questions about an account resulted in the loss of more customers.
JK needed to fix some fundamental business problems to become a more innovative company.
Most of all they needed greater flexibility to ensure that their IT systems could adapt quickly, easily and economically to support their rapidly changing business needs.
They turned to IBM for help in pursuing Service Oriented Architecture (or SOA), a business-driven IT architectural approach that supports integrating your business as linked, repeatable business tasks, or services.
JK Enterprises started with Component Business Modeling to deconstruct their business model—breaking it down into discrete, logical business processes and functions that IBM calls service components.
Each service component serves a unique purpose and interacts with other service components. IBM helped JK identify what tasks were duplicated elsewhere in their organization.
They determined what task differentiated JK from its competitors and they learned which processes were costing them too much.
Then IBM helped JK rank, prioritize and plan next steps for consolidating tasks, keeping tasks in house, partnering or outsourcing. This helped JK understand how to centralize and share services.
JK Enterprises took the results of the component business modeling work they did and used it as a starting point to move from their “as-is” account opening process to a new “to-be” process. They simulated various options until they arrived upon an optimized process. Only then did they take steps to deploy the new process.
The individual tasks that make up the new business process needed to map 1:1 to the IT assets that supported them. To decide where these services should come from, JK used asset analyzer tools to help automate this process and do a thorough inventory of existing IT assets they might be able to reuse as services.
Now the executives have taken steps resulting in a plan for transformation. They have modeled their business services and identified where consolidation and reuse could be employed.
They identified the services that differentiate them from the competition. Simulations and analysis have helped JK Enterprises optimize their account opening process and contributed to a more comprehensive understanding of what they needed to do to make these changes.
With their plan now defined, they can begin the process of transforming their business, responding efficiently and effectively to their customers’ needs.