Joachim Van Den Bergh, Stijn Viaene, Process Innovation: Redesigning an Enterprise Backbone System

1. © Vlerick Business School

2. PROCESS INNOVATION: REDESIGNING AN
ENTERPRISE BACKBONE SYSTEM
JOACHIM VAN DEN BERGH
PROF DR STIJN VIAENE

3. MEET BELGACOM MOBILE
3 © Vlerick Business School

4. MOBILE BUSINESS: A TURBULENT ENVIRONMENT
 Market Leader vs Challengers
 Fast development of new technologies and
platforms
 Price wars
© Vlerick Business School

5. IT BUSINESS PURPOSES
 Run the Business: This is an indicator of how much of the
IT resource is consumed and focused on the continuing
operation of the business. This covers largely maintenance,
Short-term
renewal, and capacity-related expenditure
 Grow the Business: This is an indicator of how much of the
IT resource is consumed and focused on developing and
enhancing IT systems in support of business growth
(typically organic growth). New projects are captured in this
category.
 Transform the Business: This is an indicator of how much
Mid-long
of the IT resource is consumed and focused on
term
implementing technology systems that support new business
models, structurally reduce total cost of ownership and
create sustained efficiencies.
© Vlerick Business School Source: Mr Scott Alcott, former Belgacom Executive VP Operations

6. SIM CARD PURCHASING ORDER MANAGEMENT
SYSTEM: AS IT WAS
 IT-supported backbone process (core)
 System breakdown risk
 Lots of manual operations
 Work-arounds and exceptions
 Limited process capacity
 Extensive lead-time
“We were facing a serious risk of business
continuity failure. At the time, the market was
growing and customers were becoming more
demanding in terms of lead time. Frankly, I do not
think we would have been able to cope much
longer. We simply could not scale, let alone be
more flexible.” Supply Chain Manager
6 © Vlerick Business School

7. SIM CARD PURCHASING ORDER MANAGEMENT
SYSTEM: AS IT HAD TO BECOME
 Stable and scalable IT-supported backbone
process (core)
1. Integration of the involved departments and
business partners
2. Reducing manual operations
3. Standardization
4. Decreasing total lead time
5. Increasing production process capacity
7 © Vlerick Business School

8. IT-ENABLED PROCESS INNOVATION
Process
Information Process
Flexibility and
Technology Innovation
Scalability
© Vlerick Business School IT impact on process innovation (adapted from Davenport, 1993)

9. CORE PROJECT PRINCIPLES
 Making the solution flexible to allow for
adaptation to future requirements and reuse of
existing components using the principles of
Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), web
services and object-oriented programming
where possible.
 Centralized approach to process governance
and ownership, using a dashboard to act as a
„process orchestrator‟.
 Making the processes product independent,
thus building a product factory, to allow
flexibility in designing
© Vlerick Business School

10. ORCHESTRATION
© Vlerick Business School

11. SPOMS LEVEL 0 PROCESS
© Vlerick Business School

12. ACCOMPLISHMENTS
 Increased SIM card production capacity
 Shorter lead time from purchase order creation until ready for delivery to the
market
 Shorter total lead time of marketing actions, from defining a new card layout
until ready for delivery to the market
 Reduction of workload in the Supply Chain Department
“The result is a truly versatile and solid new business
process supported by tools that enable the front-line staff to
provide the efficiency and flexibility our markets require.
This IT-enabled business process innovation is actually the
result of a combination of end-to-end thinking, team work,
results orientation and, last but not least, an architectural
approach to support not just sustainability of a technical
solution but also design freedom for product managers.”
© Vlerick Business School

13. LESSONS LEARNED
 Lesson 1: The Product Factory for Process
Flexibility
 Lesson 2: Combining Process Thinking (BPM)
and Architecture (SOA) for IT-enabled Process
Innovation
 Lesson 3: Excellent Project Management
© Vlerick Business School

14. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
 We sincerely thank the following people for their
input:
 Johan Verbeeck
 Pascal Masuit
 John-David Hendrickx
 Scott Alcott
 Laurent Claus
 Bert Van Genechten
© Vlerick Business School

15. THANK YOU!
JOACHIM VAN DEN BERGH
PROF STIJN VIAENE
VLERICK BUSINESS SCHOOL; WWW.VLERICK.COM
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@DESTIVIA