Development of a model for Business Process Reengineering: A practical application in a Corporate Center of a Logistics Company

The digital age and the pillars behind the Industry 4.0 are putting growing pressure on companies' Corporate Centers, thus forcing to reshape its business processes in order to increase its efficiency, reduce costs and collaborate more closely with operations. This change is being highly influenced by technology, allowing them to move from transactional and manual-based tasks to focus on higher-value-added tasks. This factors lead the company's Corporate Center under study to start implementing a continuous improvement culture, streamlining its processes and adopting a Business Process Management (BPM) approach. Hence, this works aims to develop and apply a model to reengineer business processes with an end-to-end perspective and with a high focus on efficiency improvement through digitalization. As such, the model being presented is specifically addressed for radical changes in business processes instead of trying to improve the process AS-IS. The result is the application of a model to an end-to-end process in the angel's Corporate Center, that is the starting point to other Business Process Reengineer (BPR) projects within the company, that will allow to acknowledge what are the next steps to improve its efficiency and shifting its mindset to a "Global Corporate Vision", through a strategy that adds more value to the portfolio of businesses so that the whole is worth more than the sum of its parts

Itsepalvelun käyttäjäkokemus yritysten väliselle rahoituspalvelulle

Several companies offer online loans for small and medium sized businesses in Finland. There seems to be no clear differentiating factors between the services of these lending companies. One possible differentiating factor could be the offering of a better user experience for the customer companies in the future. This work is done for an online lending company called Luottorahoitus. This study examines what kind of user experience should be designed into a business-to-business financing service. The objective of this thesis was to conceptualize and design a self-service system for Luottorahoitus customers. The main objectives for the system are to improve customers' user experience and establish more loyal customer relationships. I applied user experience design together with persuasive design in designing the self-service system. During the work I analyzed the user data and interviewed the users to construct the potential user groups for the self-service system and to understand their needs. Based on this understanding I innovated and implemented an user interface prototype with persuasive features. I conducted user testing to evaluate how well the prototype filled the users' needs. In addition I evaluated what persuasive principles could affect the users' behaviors using expert evaluations. As results of the study I can state that the persuasive user experience designed in the self-service system depends highly on behavior change the system aims for. The designed system filled the evaluation criteria for the persuasive user experience well. Based on the results I can say that the persuasive features designed into the system, especially rewards, reminders and self-monitoring, can affect the users' target behaviors positively in the context of business-to-business online financing. The target behaviors of the system were better payment behavior and customer loyalty. All the test users perceived the system as a useful tool for managing their loans and valued its easiness of use and simplicity.Suomessa on useita pienille ja keskisuurille yrityksille suunnattuja verkossa toimivia luotonantajia. Näiden tarjoajien palveluiden välillä ei kuitenkaan ole nähtävissä suuria erottumispiirteitä. Yhtenä mahdollisena erottumistekijänä tulevaisuudessa voidaan nähdä entistä paremman käyttäjäkokemuksen tarjoaminen asiakasyrityksille. Tämä työ on tehty yritysluottoja tarjoavalle online-palvelu Luottorahoitukselle. Tämä työ tutkii sitä, millainen käyttökokemus yritykseltä yritykselle rahoitusta tarjoavan palvelun itsepalvelusysteemiin tulee suunnitella. Työn tavoitteena on konseptoida ja suunnitella itsepalvelujärjestelmä Luottorahoituksen asiakkaille. Järjestelmän pääasiallisena tarkoituksena on parantaa Luottorahoituksen asiakkaiden käyttäjäkokemusta ja luoda lojaalimpia asiakassuhteita. Järjestelmän suunnittelussa hyödynnetään käyttäjäkokemussuunnittelun sekä suostuttelun ja houkuttelun periaatteita. Työn aikana selvitettiin järjestelmän potentiaaliset käyttäjäryhmät ja niiden tarpeet käyttäjätietojen analysoinnin sekä haastattelujen avulla. Tämän ymmärryksen pohjalta innovoitiin sekä toteutettiin käyttöliittymäprototyyppi, jossa hyödynnettiin suostuttelun periaatteita. Lisäksi työssä arvioitiin käyttäjätestien avulla, kuinka hyvin käyttöliittymä vastasi käyttäjien tarpeita sekä asiantuntija-arvioiden avulla, mitkä järjestelmässä olevat suostuttelun periaatteet voivat vaikuttaa käyttäjän käytökseen. Työn tuloksena voidaan todeta, että systeemiin suunniteltava käyttökokemus on pitkälti riippuvainen siitä, millaiseen käytökseen systeemillä pyritään vaikuttamaan. Työn aikana suunniteltu järjestelmä täytti sille asetetut käyttäjäkokemuksen sekä suostuttelun vaatimukset onnistuneesti. Tulosten perusteella voidaan sanoa, että järjestelmään suunnitellut houkuttelevat ominaisuudet, erityisesti palkitseminen, muistutukset sekä oman käyttäytymisen seuraaminen, vaikuttavat tässä kontekstissa positiivisesti käyttäjän kohdekäyttäytymiseen eli parempaan maksukäyttäytymiseen ja asiakaslojaaliuteen. Kaikki testikäyttäjät kokivat systeemin lisäksi hyödylliseksi apuvälineeksi luottojen hallintaan ja arvostivat sen käyttökokemuksessa erityisesti sen helppokäyttöisyyttä ja yksinkertaisuutta

Teaching and learning of performance measurement in OR/MS degrees

A review of existing UK MS/OR undergraduate programmes was completed to assess the extent and nature of performance measurement teaching. In addition, a survey of performance measurement practitioners was undertaken to obtain views on what should be taught in relation to performance measurement. A survey of 23 undergraduate MS/OR degrees in the UK revealed that all the academic respondents supported the inclusion of PM teaching. However, only four distinct PM classes could be found amongst these degrees. The PM techniques taught were broadly similar although the wider context of PM was taught in only 2 of the classes. A survey of a small number of PM practitioners revealed that the Balanced Scorecard and Benchmarking were the two most commonly applied PM techniques with the majority of respondents learning about PM from personal experience and reading rather than through formal education. It appears that there is an opportunity for MS/OR teaching to make a major contribution to the development of PM as a discipline. However, academic respondents whose MS/OR degree course did not teach PM indicated that lack of staff expertise in PM combined with an already full syllabus were the main barriers to introducing a PM class

Blockchain Based Accounts Payable Platform for Goods Trade

Goods trade is a supply chain transaction that involves shippers buying goods from suppliers and carriers providing goods transportation. Shippers are issued invoices from suppliers and carriers. Shippers carry out goods receiving and invoice processing before payment processing of bills for suppliers and carriers, where invoice processing includes tasks like processing claims and adjusting the bill payments. Goods receiving involves verification of received goods by the Shipper's receiving team. Invoice processing is carried out by the Shipper's accounts payable team, which in turn is verified by the accounts receivable teams of suppliers and carriers. This paper presents a blockchain-based accounts payable system that generates claims for the deficiency in the goods received and accordingly adjusts the payment in the bills for suppliers and carriers. Primary motivations for these supply chain organizations to adopt blockchain-based accounts payable systems are to eliminate the process redundancies (accounts payable vs. accounts receivable), to reduce the number of disputes among the transacting participants, and to accelerate the accounts payable processes via optimizations in the claims generation and blockchain-based dispute reconciliation