Business Process Analysis and Engineering

The assignment is designed to reinforce the knowledge gained in the BPAE teaching week, from Cranfield and industry lecturers, and practice the skills to use information and reporting. Business Scenario Longtau Technology is a Chinese enterprise that design, manufacture, sell and support computer network equipment. It has successfully entered the European market using the UK as the European headquarters. In the enterprise network market, it has a network of 40 distributors across UK, Germany, France, and Spain, annually selling 10,000 network switches to business customers. It has also built up a market for small business, home use and is selling 500,000 SOHO routers and repeaters annually through retail and direct channels in the UK. In the retail channels(similar to Tesco, PC World), the first line support related to sales and returns is managed by the retailers. Longtau provides support on technical issues. With the direct channels(similar to eBay, Amazon and own web shop), Longtau provides all the support to customer interactions The Managing Director(MD) arrived from China 15 years ago to start the Longtau European office in the UK. The operation procedures from the China headquarters were used when the UK office was set up. The UK office currently has 150 employees. The organization is structured as follows: 3 directors – MD, Operations, Sales, and 2 senior managers – Finance & HR. Beneath each senior manager/director are a number of direct reports, this layer of middle management total 20. The three main functional groups are the call center, sales order processing, technical support. The MD, Finance Manager and 8 of the direct reports came from China and have a close link with the head office. About 80 employees are UK Chinese persons, who speak Chinese and are UK residents, having been in the UK for many years. Each function has its departmental information system to support its work. These systems were developed in China and used in the Chinese head office, with the UK version translated for the UK use. The rapid expansion of the business was achieved by giving the head of each function the authority to grow. The result has been that the three parts behave as very independent units and gained different operations culture. There have been a lot of complaints that customer issues were lost between the call center and the sales department, resulting in lost sales and late customer deliveries. There are increasing complaints that the SOHO customers do not receive technical support to get their equipment working. This is being picked up by the PC magazines. The situation is being noticed by the Group HQ in China, and the MD is very keen to find a solution to the problem quickly. YOUR TASK You are engaged by the Longtau UK as an external consultant to explain the company’s problems and propose improvements.                                                                                            

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