Achieving Business Process Improvement in SMEs Using Open Source Content Management Systems Nikolaos A. Panayiotou1, Sotiris P. Gayialis2 and Stavros T. Ponis3 1
Faculty of Mechanical Engineering – Section of Industrial Management and Operational Research National Technical University Athens – 157 80 Zografos, Athens, Greece. E-mail:
[email protected] 2
Faculty of Mechanical Engineering – Section of Industrial Management and Operational Research National Technical University Athens – 157 80 Zografos, Athens, Greece. E-mail:
[email protected] 3
Faculty of Mechanical Engineering – Section of Industrial Management and Operational Research National Technical University Athens – 157 80 Zografos, Athens, Greece. E-mail:
[email protected] Abstract Business Process Improvement is a vital issue for Small-Medium Enterprises (SMEs) all over Europe as continuous improvement guarantees their survival and prosperity. Many SMEs try to transform their operations through ERP-driven BPR (Business Process Reengineering). Following such an approach, small companies are facing the need to document the new processes, design their new organisational chart and develop the new and differentiated job descriptions. The present paper analyses the implementation of a content management system in a Greek manufacturing SME, using an open-source (and therefore free) content management software. The purpose of the paper is to demonstrate a case where business process improvement is supported by a low-cost process management system and the use of a methodological approach for documenting and renewing business processes in a dynamic and employee-friendly manner. Keywords Content Management Systems, Business Process Improvement, SME, Case Study.
1. Literature Research Organizations can be defined as sets of interrelated business processes, each composed of interacting agents, artefacts, and suppliers whose main goal is to transform inputs in order to produce valuable outputs for customers. In exchange for delivering outputs to its external customers, the organization will get an inflow of capital (Kock and Mc Queen, 1995). The most successful organizations are those whose business processes are efficient and effective. This enables these organizations to sustain a balance between production capacity and actual throughput. This balance may be upset by a continuous and rapidly changing marketplace (Goldratt and Cox, 1986; Hammer and Champy, 1993) which calls for both radical and continuous changes (Davenport, 1993; Deming, 1986). In order to respond appropriately and quickly to external changes, organizations must create local mechanisms to impose continuous monitoring and improvement actions on their existing processes. One such mechanism has been described thoroughly in the literature by the movement of Business Process Improvement (BPI). In general, BPI is used as a term to refer to improvement schemes based on the concept of business process, whether they are radical, incremental, or somewhere in between in terms of degree of improvement sought and realized
(Kock and Mc Queen, 1995). Two representative examples of successful BPI endeavours can be found within the management literature. The “economic Japanese revolution” techniques which were based on the concept of gradual process improvement (Deming, 1986; Walton, 1989) and the Business Process Re-engineering (BPR) movement which proposed radical changes for business processes which will in turn, generate revolutionary quality and productivity improvements (Davenport, 1993; Hammer and Champy, 1993). Since the rise of BPI and for the last two decades, Information Systems and its effects on Business Process Improvement has been the subject of considerable interests. Extensive communication networks and interconnectivity have become a major force affecting businesses in fundamental ways (Madnick, 1991; Boar, 1993) in the early years. The use of network and shared-databases has been of enormous importance for eliminating duplicate activities, preventing errors, reducing cycle time in product development and improving customers’ expectations in products and services (Bhatt, 2000). The situation has changed rapidly, when the new media –internet- became more efficient in terms of speed, bandwidth and ease of use. Since then, the main focus of the organizations has turned on how they will be able to publish, manage and use corporate information and knowledge, using this new and flourishing media. The first tool that was used towards this direction was the Web Site. All Web Sites display and /or process content in order to convey information to their audiences. As Internet grew, the volume contents have grown in parallel (Mc Keever, 2003). In 1992, there were just a 1000 pages on the web. As of June 2002, over two billion pages were posted on the Internet (Electron, 2001). Eventually, some form of Content Management (CM) process or system has become essential for all organizations with a significant Web presence as the amount of digital content continues to proliferate (Butler Group, 2001). According to Tsui (2005), organizational knowledge management (KM) is becoming more and more process-centric and relevant technologies are gradually being aligned to support processbased KM activities. Additionally, there is the emergence of personal networks and applications while knowledge sharing and capturing are becoming more instantaneous (i.e. on-demand and just-in-time). All the above, along with the huge increase of content volume has led software companies to turn their focus in providing a range of technological solutions to address these new issues, such as search engines, retrieval and classification tools, e-collaboration tools, portals and last but not least, content management systems. A Content Management System (CMS) is a fairly new concept. No standards are officially published for what a CMS should be and what the critical requirements of such an application should address. In information technology literature, most discussions of content management focus on managing comprehensive web sites and/or web collaboration tools. The exact definition of “content management” tends to be ambiguous due to the phrase having different meanings across various subject disciplines. One objective definition comes from Boiko, who defines content management as a process of collecting, managing and publishing content (Boiko, 2002). Most of the companies that decide to run an intranet site come across the need of initiating a Content Management System (CMS), in other words a tool used to organize documents and keep track of what's where. And at that point the dilemma these companies are facing is whether to design and implement their own custom system or buy one off-the-self. The off-the-shelf CMS, most of the times, have been crafted by hundreds of man-hours of work, and are successfully implemented by thousands of Web sites and intranets. On the other hand, they are not easy to work with and customization might mean that a company person should have to wade through vast amounts of (often badly documented) code to find what needs changing. On the other hand, a “homemade” CMS solution, can lead to an application that is better suited to the organization’s requirements, better addresses user needs, and is better comprehended and managed by the in-house development team.
In the case of SMEs – that are the focus of this paper- this dilemma is a less hard one because of the size of the Web System (portal or other) and the lack of financial resources dedicated to – what management usually thinks- “soft” or unneeded information technologies. Therefore, most of the times SMEs are undertaking the project of developing an in-house CMS application. One such case study is going to be presented in the following chapters where business process improvement has been achieved through the in-house development of a low-cost content management system and its support with a consistent methodological approach for documenting and reviewing business processes in a dynamic and employee-friendly manner. 2. A CMS Portal for a Greek SME 2.1 Introduction Business Process Improvement is a vital issue for Small-Medium Enterprises (SMEs) all over Europe as continuous improvement guarantees their survival and prosperity. Many SMEs try to transform their operations through ERP-driven BPR (Business Process Reengineering). Following such an approach, small companies find it easier to improve substantially their business processes using the ERP functionality and adding new functionality only in the areas that cannot be covered at all by the standard software package. This ERP-driven BPR affects the organisation both on its processes and organisational structure. Most companies find it necessary to document the new processes, design their new organisational chart and develop the new and differentiated job descriptions. Many attempts can be found in the literature, some by the authors of this paper (Panayiotou et al., 2004), trying to document the reengineered system of an SME, covering the most important (and interrelated) dimensions of an organisational system, these being, Business Processes, Organisational Structure and Information Technology. Although many of these attempts can be characterised as successful, they have a serious practical disadvantage that places obstacles in their adaptation: the effort needed to keep the documented system up-to-date as this evolves. The present paper analyses the implementation of a content management system in a Greek manufacturing SME, using an open-source (and therefore free) content management software. The purpose of the paper is to demonstrate a case where business process improvement is achieved through a low-cost process management system and the use of a methodological approach for documenting and renewing business processes in a dynamic and employeefriendly manner. 2.2 CMS Development Methodological Approach The company under discussion had undergone a difficult two-year period involving a first Business Process Reengineering initiative, followed by a consequent ERP-driven BPR. The change created an expected culture shock to the company, which, however, was managed successfully after a six-month period of fine-tuning. The period of the rigorous change was followed by a period of incremental continuous improvement of the new business processes. Taking into account that a complete process documentation of the transformed organisation existed, the need for a technological system that could utilise the easy access of all the available information on time was identified. The old practice of keeping content in the corporate network was not satisfactory at all, as past experience proved that the content could not be located and retrieved easily, causing frustration to the employees. Moreover, the version control of different documents issued was an unsolved problem causing troubles and misunderstandings. As a result, the BPI initiative undertaken by the company was decided to be supported by a user-friendly information system providing the opportunity to access information needed for the everyday operations. The content should be designed in such a way that would combine the hierarchical functional search based on the traditional departmental organisational structure with the innovative business process-oriented search. The collaborative technologies
should be used in order to empower the cooperation of the employees despite the existing geographical distance of the three sites owned by the company. Business Process Improvement has a typical lifecycle that is repeated on an on-going basis. The continuous improvement is initiated by the Top Management, which defines the corporate business strategy. The process design is accomplished by the employees that participate in the processes and is guided by the process owners in accordance to the existing business strategy. Each newly designed process is integrated in the existing business processes and is disseminated to the related stakeholders. The use of the business processes by the employees in practice leads to the identification of improvement points and, in some cases, it may initiate the alteration of the existing business strategy and a next round of continuous improvement. A successful Content Management System must support every step of the continuous improvement lifecycle. The content strategy that defines the content structure and scope must result from the existing business strategy. The workflow of every process improvement must be supported by the CMS covering all the corresponding workflow, such as the alteration of specific processes, the discussion of related stakeholders, the approval of changes, the inclusion of the new or altered process in the process manuals and the dissemination to every stakeholder. The use of the content that concerns the business processes results in content alterations and the content management lifecycle starts from the beginning. Figure 1 depicts these two parallel lifecycles of BPI and a CMS.
Process Continuous Improvement Business Process Use
Business Strategy
Business Processes Lifecycle
Dissemination
Business Process Design
Business Process Integration
AlterationDevelopmentMaintenance Content Use
Content Strategy
CMS Lifecycle
Authorisation & Dissemination
Content Design
Content Migration
Figure 1. CMS & Business Processes Lifecycle
The developed CMS system was constructed following a systematic approach coherent with the CMS and Business Processes lifecycle presented above. The approach consisted of five distinctive phases: Strategic definition: the strategic definition of the CMS orientation defined the scope of the content, the users of the system and the desirable outcomes after the implementation. One of the most important issues defined by the Top Management in the strategic definition was the implementation of the CMS system using an open source software, putting more emphasis on the development of content itself. Such a decision was in accordance with the identified technological trends in the area of Content Management Systems. Market research of available CMS: A thorough research following the strategic orientation of the system, in order to identify all the appropriate open-source software which was capable of covering the specific needs of the company. The selection of the tools was based on the offered functional specifications, the number of prior successful installations and the availability of development and support documentation. Functional requirements analysis and CMS design: The exact definition of the functional requirements was based on face-to-face interviews with the process owners and the IT
manager of the company. In order for the interviews to become more effective, a structured questionnaire was used, helping to identify the structure of the content, the logic of its categorisation and the look-and-feel of the portal. After the completion of these interviews, a second round of interviews was held in order to define the appropriate roles, to assign the roles to specific employees and to design the necessary workflows for the content management. Portal development: The portal development realised the identified requirements by parameterising the content management software and developing new functions that could not be covered using html, xml and the python software languages (the development accounted for no more than 15% of the total effort for the creation of the portal, making the project easily manageable). The first creation of the portal was followed by a two-week period of testing. Manuals documentation: Three different manuals were documented for the CMS portal: one for the users (structured in different parts for each defined role), one for the system administrator and one for the developer who would be the responsible for future expansion or alteration of the system. A short on-line help for the corporate users was also included in the portal. Figure 2 depicts a two-level analysis of the methodological approach followed in the case of the Greek SME.References 0 Development of Corporate Content Management System 1 Strategic Definition
3.1 Preparation of Functional Requirements Questionnaire
2
3
4
Market Research of Open-Source Systems
Functional Requirements Analysis & CMS Design
Portal Development
3.3
3.2 Personal Interviews Conducting
4.1 Portal Parameterisation
3.4
Functional Requirements Definition
4.2 Portal Development
3.4
Content Structure Definition
4.3 Content Collection
5
6 Manuals Documentation
3.5
Preparation of Users’ Roles Questionnaire
4.4
3.6
Personal Interviews Conducting
4.5
Content Insertion
Users’ Manual Documentation
Users’ Roles Definition
4.6
Users Profiles Creation
5.1
CMS Productive Operation
Testing
5.2 Administrator's Manual Documentation
5.3 Developer’s Manual Documentation
Figure 2. Methodological Approach for Corporate CMS Development
The methodological approach tried to involve all the process owners in the development of the CMS system, making this a tool that could support the company’s every day operation by covering specific recognised needs. The whole CMS portal creation project lasted for three months and was mainly based on the resources of the company itself. 2.3 The CMS Portal The developed content management system uses an intranet portal as a front-end and provides the following functionality for managing the developed content: Document management in a Windows Explore-like manner Hierarchical document structuring for each organisational business process
Process-oriented structuring connected with the hierarchical structuring described above Search capability based on the document title, the corresponding sub-process, the involved Departments, the ERP transaction and predefined keywords, as well as identification of related content Document version control enabling the monitoring of different versions of information Multiple forums functionality for each business process giving the chance to each business process stakeholder to share information and exchange opinions about everyday activities News and events dissemination capability collaborating with a built-in calendar Provision of information for new content creation or alteration and support of e-mail notifications triggered by predefined actions A document management system based on the approach that each process stakeholder can suggest process improvement, that can be reviewed and approved (or not) by each process owner, and then can be published by the publisher (a role occupied by an employee of the IT Department) The typical structure of the portal is depicted in Figure 3. It offers the opportunity to the users to have a large number of options for creating, finding and communicating content through a dynamic menu. The most important aspect, however, is that each user is able to create his/her own portal, viewing the information which is most appropriate for him/ her.
Search Horizontal Navigation Bar Hierarchical Navigation Portlet
News Portlet
Main Content Area
Events Portlets
Forums
Calendar
Recent Items
Review Portlet
Figure 3. CMS Portal Structure
The opening page of the portal, as this is seen by the user in the first time is depicted in Figure 4. The development of the content in the content management system was based on previous work done by the authors using the following tools for covering the IT, process and organisational dimensions: Organisational charts Process (and sub-process) charts representing activities, departments/ divisions carrying out the activities, exchanged information between the activities, IT roles needed to perform the activities (if applicable) and IT transactions (if applicable). Process descriptions connected with the related process charts ERP documentation manuals Analytical job descriptions IT Help Cards (a list of important transaction analysed per business process) for users’ support
Change management regular newsletters
Figure 4. Company CMS Portal (In Greek)
2.4 CMS Performance Measures In order to control and improve the outcomes of the Content Management System, a number of key performance indicators were defined: Number of employees ‘buying in’ to the Portal Achieved levels of quality content as monitored in on-line satisfaction measurement questionnaire. Expansion rate of content database (measured in Mbytes) Satisfaction levels emerging from annual monitoring exercise Assessed usefulness of editorial guidelines Utility of classification system Feedback from stakeholder review The early definition of the selected set of performance measures enabled the initiation of the evaluation process, immediately after the productive operation of the CMS system. 3. CMS Results & Implications for SMEs The indications after the first months the CMS operation are encouraging. The system is up and running for the last three months and some first statistics of its operation have been accumulated: 90% of the employees have accessed the available material at least once (the corresponding percentage before the implementation for the available material was less than 30%) 80% of the employees characterised the document management system as very useful because it can support them in everyday operations in an easy way (results of an employee satisfaction survey that took place two months after the implementation) Five business sub-processes were changed and two new (New Material Creation, IT Project Requests Submission) were created Only two by the six forums were substantially active due to luck of previous related experience of the employees The first results of the use of the system were very encouraging for the SME, however some very helpful outcomes permit future improvement. The documented material (content) was found to be comprehensible by the users, however, not all of them were able (either because of
lack of time or because of lack of familiarity with specific functionality) to include the suggested changes in the documents (especially in the case of process charts). This problem was met by the support provided to the employees by an IT employee, responsible for the company’s process modelling methods. The ease of use of the system, the low cost of the implementation and the positive results of its application in the SME of our case study suggests that its applicability to other SMEs in Europe could prove helpful in their business process improvement initiatives. However, the role of information technology must not be over-emphasised and the focus of the CMS system must be kept on the content. References Bahtt G. (2000). An empirical examination of the effects of information systems integration on business process improvement, International Journal of Operations & Production Management, 20(11):1331-1359. Boar B H (1993). The Art of Strategic Planning for Information Technology: Crafting Strategy for the 90’s, John Wiley and Sons, New York, N.Y. Boiko B (2002). Content Management Bible, Hungry Minds, New York, NY. Butler Group (2001). Content Management Report, Butler Group Corporation, available at: www.butlergroup.com/reports/content/mansup.asp. Davenport T H (1993). Process Innovation, Harvard Business Press, Boston, MA. Deming W E. (1986). Out of the Crisis, MIT, Center for Advanced Engineering Study, Cambridge, MA. Ektron (2001). Effective Web Content Management, Empowering the Business User while IT Maintains Control, Ektron, NH. Goldratt E M and Cox J (1986). The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement, North River, NewYork, NY. Hammer M and Champy J (1993). Reengineering the Corporation, Harper Business, New York, NY. Han Y (2004). Digital content management: the search for a content management system, Library Hi Tech, 22 (4): 355-365 Madnick S E (1991). The Information Technology Platform, in Scott Morton. M.S. (Ed), The Corporation of the 1990’s: Information Technology and Organizational Transformation, Oxford University Press, New York, NY. McKeever S (2003). Understanding Web Content Management Systems: evolution, lifecycle and market, Industrial Management & Data Systems, 103(9): 686-692. Kock N F Jr and McQueen R (1995). Integrating groupware technology into a business process improvement framework, Information Technology & People, 8(4):19-34. Panayiotou N A, Ponis S T, Gayialis S P and Panayiotou T A (2004). Business Process Documentation for ERP-Supported Organisations, WSEAS Transactions on Computers, 3 (5), 1512-1519. Tsui E (2005). The role of IT in KM: Where are we now and where are we heading, Journal of Knowledge Management, 9(1):3-6. Walton M (1989). The Deming Management Method, Mercury, London.
