應用企業流程管理 (BPM) 提升績效之研究：以某國際快遞台灣分公司為例 - 政大學術集成

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(1)國立政治大學商學院企業管理學系 (MBA 學位學程) 碩士論文 Department of Business Administration College of Commerce National Chengchi University Master Thesis. 政治大. 應用企業流程管理 (BPM) 提升績效之研究：以某國際快遞台灣. 立. 分公司為例. ‧ 國. 學. The application of business process management (BPM) for. ‧. performance improvement: A case study of an express company in. er. io. sit. y. Nat. Taiwan.. n. a指導教授: l C 羅明琇博士n i v hengchi U Advisor Sonia M. Lo, Ph.D. 研究生: 張育銘撰 Yu-Ming Chang 中華民國一百零六年六月 June, 2017.

(2) Table of Content List of Tables ...........................................................................................................IV List of Figures ........................................................................................................... V Abstract ....................................................................................................................VI 1. Introduction ............................................................................................................ 1 1.1. Research Motivation ........................................................................................ 1. 政治大 1.3. Research Procedure 立.......................................................................................... 3 1.2. Research Objective .......................................................................................... 3. ‧ 國. 學. 2. Literature Review ................................................................................................... 5. ‧. 2.1. Business Process .............................................................................................. 5. sit. y. Nat. 2.2. BPM ................................................................................................................. 7. io. n. al. er. 2.2.1. Definition of BPM ....................................................................................... 8. i n U. v. 2.2.2. The Origins of BPM..................................................................................... 9. Ch. engchi. 2.2.3. Status of BPM ............................................................................................ 11 2.3. BPM Life Cycle ............................................................................................. 11 2.4. BPM Applications .......................................................................................... 19 2.5. Summary ........................................................................................................ 21 3. Methodology ........................................................................................................ 22 3.1. Case Study Methodology ............................................................................... 22. I.

(3) 3.2. Research Subject ............................................................................................ 22 3.3. Case Study Interview ..................................................................................... 24 3.3.1. The Interview Questions ............................................................................ 24 3.3.2. The Interview Respondents ........................................................................ 25 3.3.3. Interview Principles ................................................................................... 27 4. Case Analysis ....................................................................................................... 28 4.1. Case Company Problem ................................................................................. 28. 政治大. 4.2. The Compensation Approval Process ............................................................ 30. 立. 4.2.1. The AS-IS Process ..................................................................................... 30. ‧ 國. 學. 4.2.2. The PDCA Cycle ........................................................................................ 35. ‧. 4.2.3. The TO-BE Process and Results ................................................................ 37. Nat. sit. y. 4.3. The Onboarding Process ................................................................................ 41. n. al. er. io. 4.3.1. The AS-IS Process ..................................................................................... 41. Ch. i n U. v. 4.3.2. The PDCA Cycle ........................................................................................ 44. engchi. 4.3.3. The TO-BE Process.................................................................................... 45 4.4. The BPM Life Cycle Analysis of the Case Company.................................... 49 5. Conclusion and Future Development ................................................................... 58 5.1. Conclusion ..................................................................................................... 58 5.2. Business Implications .................................................................................... 59 5.3. Research Contribution ................................................................................... 59 II.

(4) 5.3.1. Theoretical Contribution ............................................................................ 59 5.3.2. Practical Contribution ................................................................................ 59 5.4. Limitation ....................................................................................................... 60 5.5. Future Research ............................................................................................. 60 References ................................................................................................................ 61. 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. III. i n U. v.

(5) List of Tables Table 1. Definitions of Business Process ................................................................... 6 Table 2. Definitions of Business Process Management ............................................. 9 Table 3. Alignment of BPM life cycles with the ABPMP model............................... 13 Table 4. The PDCA Cycle of ABPMP ...................................................................... 15 Table 5. The Case Study Interview Questions .......................................................... 25 Table 6. Interview Respondents ............................................................................... 26. 治政大 Process ..................... 39 Table 7. The Changes of the AS-IS Compensation Approval 立 ‧ 國. 學. Table 8. The Performance of the TO-BE Compensation Approval Process ............ 40 Table 9. The Changes of the Onboarding Process ................................................... 48. ‧. Table 10. The Performance Results of the TO-BE Onboarding Process ................. 48. y. Nat. er. io. sit. Table 11. The BPM Life Cycle Analysis of the Compensation Approval Process.... 52 Table 12. The BPM Life Cycle Analysis of the Onboarding Process ....................... 54. n. al. Ch. engchi. IV. i n U. v.

(6) List of Figures Figure 1. The Statistics of the Taiwan Express Industry............................................ 1 Figure 2. Research Procedure .................................................................................... 4 Figure 3. An overview of BPM adapted from Harmon (2010) .................................. 8 Figure 4. Business Process Rearrangement and Renaming Model.......................... 18 Figure 5. An External Look into BPM Source: Bernardo et al. (2017) ................... 19 Figure 6. The organization structure of the case company ...................................... 23. 治政大 Figure 7. The FOCUS Strategy ................................................................................ 23 立 ‧ 國. 學. Figure 8. Target Problematic Process and Their Responsibility .............................. 30 Figure 9. The AS-IS Compensation Approval Process ............................................ 33. ‧. Figure 10. The AS-IS Offer Letter Process .............................................................. 34. y. Nat. er. io. sit. Figure 11. The TO-BE Compensation Approval Process ........................................ 38 Figure 12. The AS-IS Onboarding Process .............................................................. 43. al. n. v i n C h Process ............................................................ Figure 13. The TO-BE Onboarding 47 engchi U. V.

(7) Abstract Organizations are facing a more and more competitive market not only in Taiwan but also around the globe. Business Process Management (BPM) is considered a weapon used to better satisfy customers’ needs so that organizations can survive competition. However, it is surprising that previous BPM studies mainly focused on the primary process and neglected the important support process, for instance, human resource management. Through a case study, this research extends the application of BPM from the primary process to the support process, reveals the. 政治大. inadequacy of the current BPM life cycle, and guides practitioners in managing. 立. the business process.. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. VI. i n U. v.

(8) 1. Introduction 1.1. Research Motivation The economy of the Express industry in Taiwan has been suffering from limited growth from 2012 to 2015 as Figure 1 shows. The average annual growth rate is less than one percent, indicating that the market growth of the Express industry is weak. To achieve a performance higher than the market average, organizations need to either increase the value to their customers or decrease their. 政治大. cost. One way to manage this situation is through Business Process Management (BPM) (Trkman, 2010).. ‧ 國. 4,350. y er. al. 0.1% 4,387. Ch -2.3%. U e n g c h i4,393. v ni. 2.0% 1.0% 0.0% -1.0% -2.0%. 4,300. -3.0% 2012. 2013. 2014. Year GDP. Growth Rate (%). Figure 1. The Statistics of the Taiwan Express Industry Source: Ministry of Transportation and Communication, Taiwan. 1. 2015. Growthe Rate. 4,400. 4,554. sit. 4,488. 0.6%. 4.0% 3.0%. n. GDP (in 100 million NTD). 3.7%. io. 4,450. ‧. 4,500. Taiwan Express Industry. Nat. 4,550. 學. 4,600. 立.

(9) Therefore, although BPM is getting more and more attention, it is not a new concept (Alibabaei, Bandara, &Aghdasi, 2009). According to Hammer (2002), BPM is a high-level concept that incorporates numerous process management methodologies; for instance, the Six Sigma and Lean Management. The point is to flexibly use the tool that best fits the organization’s situation. The advantage of BPM is that the organization will not be restricted by the limitation of one tool. The term BPM can be traced back to the late 1990s. It was first applied to a financial company’s billing process to increase efficiency (Hammer &Champy,. 政治大 manufacturing process, which were an organization’s primary process (Hammer 立. 1993). Later, BPM was used to improve the performance of the sales process and. ‧ 國. 學. &Steven Stenton, 1999; Khosravi, 2016). Primary processes directly deliver value to external customers, while support processes are designed to support the primary. ‧. process and therefore, do not directly deliver value to their external customer. sit. y. Nat. (ABPMP, 2013).. n. al. er. io. Although it’s a long-discussed topic among researchers and practitioners,. i n U. v. its applications to the human resource management (HRM) field are still limited.. Ch. engchi. HRM is typically considered a support process in organizations. It helps organizations recruit, train, and retain qualified people to perform the primary process that directly delivers value to external customers. Express is a labor-intensive industry that requires many drivers to deliver packages. However, this job is becoming less and less desirable in Taiwan due to its working environment. Any workforce shortage of drivers will lead to overtime working and delayed delivery, the two unwanted results that will influence employees’ and customers’ perception. It is surprising there is so little BPM 2.

(10) research on HRM. To fill this gap, this research was developed to focus on the practical application of BPM in the human resource department through case study.. 1.2. Research Objective Current studies mainly focus on applying BPM to the primary process in an organization. The support process is somehow neglected in the academic field. The purpose of this research is to improve support process performance by applying the BPM life cycle. It, therefore, contributes to the incomplete common body of BPM knowledge. For these objectives, the following research questions will be answered:. 立. 政治大. (1) How to apply the BPM Life Cycle to support processes?. ‧ 國. 學. (2) Is there any inadequacy in current BPM Life Cycle?. ‧. 1.3. Research Procedure. y. Nat. er. io. sit. The study was conducted by first defining the research purpose. A review of relevant literature was then delivered, which includes Business Process, BMP,. al. n. v i n C h company records and the BMP Life Cycle. Afterward, were collected and a case engchi U interview was conducted focusing on the life cycle of applying BPM to the supportive process. The conclusion is drawn at the end of this research. The overall research procedures are shown in Figure 2.. 3.

(11) 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. i n U. Figure 2. Research Procedure. 4. v.

(12) 2. Literature Review Organizations are now facing an environment that changes rapidly, which leads to a growing interest in improving business process to boost performance (Trkman, 2010). This chapter illustrates what BPM is, its current status and an attempt to understand how to implement it in organizations. Specifically, different sets of stages in the field of the BPM life cycle were reviewed. The study aims to contribute to the growing body of research in the field of BPM and to answer the call for a comprehensive view on the BPM life cycle.. 政治大. The consistency and inconsistency in the literature will be addressed. Lastly, the. 立. PDCA Cycle tailored by the Association of Business Process Management. ‧ 國. 學. Professionals will be introduced, which is the reference model for the study.. ‧. 2.1. Business Process. Nat. sit. y. Business process is defined heterogeneously throughout the literature.. n. al. er. io. Each researcher depicted their interpretation of the business process in their paper,. i n U. v. and there seems to be no single widely used definition in this field (Palmberg,. Ch. engchi. 2009). Dr. William Edwards Deming, whose studies led to the modern quality movement, defined process as “essentially any sequence of work activities” (Deming, 1953; Hammer, 2010). Rummler and Brache (1995) considered business process as “a series of steps designed to produce a product or service.” Hammer, the pioneer of business process reengineering, defined business process as “an organized group of related activities that work together to create a result of value to customers” (Hammer, 2002). Table 1 lists all the reviewed articles and books sorted by year. 5.

(13) Table 1 Definitions of Business Process Author/s. Business Process Definition. Deming (1953). Essentially any sequence of work activities.. Rummler and Brache (1995) A series of steps designed to produce a product or service. Burlton (2001). A true process comprises all the things we do to provide someone who cares with what they expect to receive.. 政治大. 立 An organized group of related activities that work. Hammer (2002). ‧ 國. 學. together to create a result of value to customers.. Palmberg (2009). ‧. y. Nat. sit. io. al. n Milan et al. (2014). A business process is a complete, dynamically coordinated set of activities or logically related tasks that must be performed to deliver value to customers or to fulfill other strategic goals.. er. Trkman (2010). A horizontal sequence of activities that transforms an input (need) to an output (result) to meet the needs of customers or stakeholders.. Ch. engchi. i n U. v. A set of activities necessary and sufficient for transformation of inputs into the output values that will meet the needs of the customers.. In 2009, Palmberg conducted a large-scale review of the definition of business process. Seventy-seven articles were selected and analyzed in his paper. He found that although every author defined business process in his or her own words, six components could be seen in almost every definition: 6.

(14) (1) Input and output (2) Interrelated activities (3) Intrafunctional or cross-functional (4) Purpose or value for customer (5) Resource use (6) Repeatability A detailed introduction of these components is not the purpose of this study. Readers may refer to Klara Palmberg’s article “Exploring Process Management:. 政治大 provided a condensed process definition including all six components in his paper 立 are there any widespread models and definitions?” for more details. Palmberg. ‧ 國. 學. stating that business process is “a horizontal sequence of activities that transforms an input (need) to an output (result) to meet the needs of customers or stakeholders”. ‧. (Palmberg, 2009). For the purpose of this research, business process is considered. sit. y. Nat. as defined by Palmberg (2009), since this definition includes the process providing. io. al. n. 2.2. BPM. er. value to the “internal customer,” which is the main concern of this research.. Ch. engchi. i n U. v. BPM is a method to manage horizontal sequences of activities within an organization. It is widely accepted that BPM has its roots in three academic fields: Total Quality Management (TQM), Business Process Reengineering (BPR) and Information Technology (IT) (Harmon, 2010; Jeston &Nelis, 2008; Jurisch, Palka, Wolf, &Krcmar, 2013; Roeser &Kern, 2015). Similar to business process, BPM has various meanings among the articles. In this section, the definition of BPM is first reviewed, followed by its origins to get a better understanding of BPM (i.e.,. 7.

(15) what is BPM?). The status of BPM is then reviewed (Where are we now?). An overview of BPM is shown in Figure 3.. 立. 政治大. ‧ 國. 學. Figure 3. An overview of BPM adapted from Harmon (2010). ‧ y. Nat. er. io. sit. 2.2.1. Definition of BPM. BPM was defined differently in the literature (Roeser &Kern, 2015); hence,. al. n. v i n C h people (Buh, Kovačič, it means different things to different &Indihar Štemberger, engchi U 2015). Some define it vaguely (Hammer, 2002; Skrinjar &Trkman, 2013).. However, BPM is considered a management discipline (Aalst, 2013; ABPMP 2013), or a combination of tools and discipline (Hung, 2006; Palmberg, 2009). Table 2 lists some BPM definitions in the last decade. In this paper, BPM is defined as a set of tools and discipline that aim to improve the business process and to integrate the whole organization in a permanent and continuous manner (ABPMP, 2013; Palmberg, 2009). This definition captures the main characteristics of BPM. 8.

(16) that can be discovered among different researchers: “continuous improvement,” and a, “set of tools and discipline.” Table 2 Definitions of Business Process Management Author/s (Year). Business Process Management Definition. Hammer (2002). A structured approach to performance improvement that centers on the disciplined design and careful execution of a company’s end-to-end business process.. Hung (2006). An integrated management philosophy and set of practices that includes incremental change and radical change in business process, and emphasizes continuous improvement.. 政治大 a set of tools and techniques for improving 立Both processes and a method of integrating the whole. Palmberg (2009). ‧ 國. employees.. A management discipline that treats business processes as assets. It presumes that organizational objectives can be achieved through the definition, engineering, control and dedication to continuous improvement of business process.. ‧. ABPMP (2013). er. io. sit. y. Nat. a l The discipline that combines v i n Ch information e n g technology c h i U and. n. Aalst (2013). 學. organization and it needs to be understood by all. knowledge from. knowledge from management science and applies this to operational business processed.. Skrinjar & Trkman (2013). A structured, analytical, cross-functional, continuous improvement of processes.. 2.2.2. The Origins of BPM According to Harmon (2010), there was a consensus that the concept of BPM originated from Total Quality Management (TQM), Business Process 9.

(17) Reengineering (BPR), and Information Technology (IT). TQM aims to improve the existing process by eliminating waste and automating non-value added actions on a continuous basis. This approach has its limitation (Hammer, 1990, 2010). Hammer (2002) said that “no matter how hard people work; they cannot exceed the capability of the process as it has been designed. Continuous improvement requires an improved design.” In such circumstances, the fundamental problem lies in the faulty design of the process (Hammer, 2010). Therefore, the concept of Business Process Reengineering (BPR). 政治大 1993). BPR Proponents believe that companies need to break from the old way of 立 arose in the 1990s (Davenport &Short, 1990; Hammer, 1990; Hammer &Champy,. ‧ 國. 學. doing business so that they can fit in a rapid changing environment (Hammer, 1990). However, even though Hammer and Davenport provided successful. ‧. practices in their articles, Champy (1995) discovered that 70% of BPR programs. sit. y. Nat. failed. Despite the high failure rate, there is a consensus that companies can still. io. n. al. er. benefit from a BPR program if it is implemented correctly (Alibabaei et al., 2009).. i n U. v. TQM and BPR both aim to boost corporate performance by improving the. Ch. engchi. business process. Nevertheless, TQM is considered an evolutionary approach that delivers incremental improvement, and it requires the corporation to enhance its process little by little continuously. Conversely, BPR intends to provide a radical improvement in a short period by changing the process design, and it is more like a revolutionary approach (Serban, 2015; Stoddard &Jarvenpaa, 1995). During the time of TQM and BPR, IT is viewed as a critical enabler to success because automating processes can provide many benefits if the processes are well designed (Fiedler, Grover, &Teng, 1995; Jurisch et al., 2013) 10.

(18) In the early 21st century, researchers and practitioners started to put TQM, BPR, and IT together under the name of BPM (Hammer, 2010; Kirkor, 2010; S. M.Lee &Asllani, 1997; Roeser &Kern, 2015). BPM, therefore, includes two sets of tools that have a common goal but vary in essence. Which tool to use depends on the patterns of the performance deficiency. “Pervasive performance shortcomings generally indicate a design flaw; occasional ones are usually the result of execution difficulties” (Hammer, 2010).. 2.2.3. Status of BPM. 政治大. BPM gained more and more attention both in the academic field and in. 立. practice (Skrinjar &Trkman, 2013). The number of published research studies. ‧ 國. 學. increased every year, and most were published in the Business Process Management Journal, followed by Conference Proceedings (Roeser &Kern,. ‧. 2015). The most famous and premier conference for BPM researchers is The BPM. Nat. sit. y. Conference. According to Dumas (2015), recent BPM research trends focus on. n. al. er. io. interdisciplinary aspects of BPM and validation of the BPM Lifecycle from. i n U. v. industry track. Moreover, previous BPM research was mostly conducted in Europe,. Ch. engchi. America, and countries in Asia like China, Japan, Korea and India. Therefore, there is a call for further research in other countries to contribute to the common knowledge of BPM (Roeser &Kern, 2015).. 2.3. BPM Life Cycle BPM is dedicated to the continuous improvement of business process. For this, researchers developed many BPM life cycles to manage this closed-loop initiative. As mentioned before, BPM meant different things to different people. 11.

(19) These various definitions led to inconsistent research on the BPM life cycle. Hence, a group of researchers conducted an analysis of the BPM life cycle in 2014, trying to find out the alignment among the many different models (Macedo de Morais, Kazan, Inês Dallavalle de Pádua, &Lucirton Costa, 2014). The research compared seven BPM life cycles to the one proposed in 2009 by the Association of Business Process Management Professional (ABPMP), a nonprofit organization dedicated to the BPM common body of knowledge. The research findings show that most of the life cycles emphasize the business process. 政治大 each other, are not fundamentally so, and can be projected in the ABPMP model. 立. automation. Moreover, all of the studied BPM life cycles, though different from. ‧ 國. 學. The difference and similarities of the BPM life cycles in the research are summarized in Table 3. The ABPMP BPM life cycle is used as a reference model,. ‧. and the other models are projected in it. The reader should interpret the table by. sit. y. Nat. observing the first row as steps of the ABPMP BPM life cycle. Each step in the. io. er. first row has a corresponding step in another model. There is no association with. al. the ABPMP BPM life cycle if the cell is blank. Also, a step is associated with two. n. v i n C example, the U or more steps of another model.hFor e n g c h i ABPMP BPM life cycle sees monitoring and control as one step, while Zur Muehlen and Ho (2006) separate it into two phases.. 12.

(20) Table 3 Alignment of BPM life cycles with the ABPMP model Steps. Authors Planning and strategy. Analysis. Hallerbach et al.. Design and modeling. Implementation. Monitoring and control. Refining. Modeling. Frequency and. Execution and Monitoring. Optimization. Control. Diagnosis. Monitoring and control. Optimization. Selection. (2008) Design Development of strategy. Definition and modeling. objectives and analysis of environment. (2004a) Verma (2009). Administration and. Design. Configuration. Execution. Diagnosis. Identify process. Classify process. Choose process. Define tool and. Monitor. implement process. process. Design and. Configuration. io. Weske (2007). Define objectives. Monitoring. al. ‧. Van der Aalst. improvement. Implementation. ‧ 國. Ho (2006). and Evaluation. 學. Specification of. Execution 治政大 Implementation. Nat. Zur Muehlen and. 立 Design. Execution. y. Houy et al. (2010). Configuration. sit. Netjes et al. (2006). Operation. er. ABPMP (2009). Performance evaluation. n. iv n C Note. From An analysis of BPM lifecycles: from a literature review to a h framework proposal, by e n g c h i UMacedo de Morais et al., 2014, Business Process Management Journal, 20(3), p.425. Copyright 2014 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited stakeholders. analysis. 13.

(21) The above academic findings supported the viewpoint of ABPMP (2013) that “regardless of the number of phrases in a BPM life cycle and regardless of the labels used to describe them, the vast majority can be mapped to the Plan, Do, Check, Act (PDCA) Cycle made popular by Dr. W. Edwards Deming in 1950s” (ABPMP, 2013, p. 53). ABPMP (2013) claimed that different labels caused confusion among practitioners and researchers, and led to inconsistent research findings. The Deming Cycle is simple, renowned and less biased. Therefore, the PDCA cycle should be used to explain and to deploy BPM program (ABPMP,. 政治大 instead of developing a new life cycle (Lee & Dale 1998; Makhlouf &Allal-Cherif, 立 2013, p. 53). Many researchers and practitioners support using the PDCA cycle. 2015; Munehira, 2014; Wangen &Snekkenes, 2014).. ‧ 國. 學. The ABPMP’s PDCA depicts all actions an organization should perform to. ‧. implement a BPM project. It includes understanding the current (AS-IS) business. sit. y. Nat. context, designing the future (TO-BE) business process, implementing the TO-BE. io. al. er. business process, monitoring process performance, and responding to performance. n. results. The PDCA cycle of ABPMP is organized in Table 4.. Ch. engchi. 14. i n U. v.

(22) Table 4 The PDCA Cycle of ABPMP The Plan Stage — define business context and design business process. 政治大. Disclose following information to define business context: The customer of the process. . The process output and a clear understanding of why the process output is considered valuable to the customer. . How the process and process output align to the organization strategy. . The process input(s), the event(s) that can trigger the process execution. . The existence of controls, such as external regulation or internal policies and rules, which constrain process design and execution. . Baseline performance target (if it is an existing process). . Future-state performance target. ‧. ‧ 國. 立. 學. . y. Nat. sit. Articulate the following information to design business process:. . The various deliverables and artifacts that are produced during process execution and the various states through which they progress. . Organizations, functions, and roles that take part in process execution. . Information systems used to support process execution. . The different locations in which activities are performed and in which deliverables and artifacts related to the process are stored. . Specific events that drive process execution. n. al. er. The activities that make up the business process. io. . Ch. engchi. i n U. v. (continued). 15.

(23) . Business rules that constrain process execution. . Process performance metrics and measurement points. The Do Stage — commit process designed to operations . Creation of new roles and role responsibilities or the modification of the existing one. . Development or restructuring of functional organizations. . Introduction of new customer channels and touch points. . Creation and implementation of process performance monitoring mechanisms, performance dashboards, and escalation mechanisms. ‧ 國. . 學. . 治政 Build of enhancement of information systems, including functional applications and大 business process and workflow automation Development and deployment of operational support 立 tools such as Standard Operating Procedures, Job Aids, and System User Guides. The Check Stage — measure process performance against expectation. . Cost: e.g., cost of rework. . Customer Satisfaction. y. Service Quality: e.g., responsiveness. sit. . al. er. Product Quality: e.g., defects per million. n. . io. Timeliness: e.g., cycle time. Nat. . ‧. Example of common measures:. Ch. engchi. i n U. v. The Act Stage — make determinations and react accordingly to process performance measures . Maintain the process to meet new performance target. . Push new strategic, functional and operational directives into Plan stage to continue the closed-loop system. Note. From BPM CBOK (p.53-59), by ABPMP, 2013, Copyright 2013 by the Association of Business Process Management Professionals 16.

(24) Nonetheless, current studies of the BPM life cycle focus on providing a comprehensive view but fail to deal with the high risk during implementation (Khosravi, 2016). As mentioned before, 70% of BPR projects failed to reach predetermined goals (Champy, 1995). Khosravi (2016) believed that the high failure rate could be attributed to lack of commitment from senior management, a lack of clear objectives, and employee resistance. The root problem may lie in the design of methods. Therefore, he proposed a new model in trying to mitigate the. 政治大 (BPR2), as shown in Figure 4. The distinction of BPR2 is that it embraces the 立 gap. The model is called Business Process Rearrangement and Renaming Model. ‧ 國. 學. power of name as a technique to eliminate employee resistance in its cycle steps. However, the model only focused on the implementation of BPR but ignored the. ‧. other half of BPM—the incremental methods descended from TQM. Thus, it. y. sit. io. n. al. er. not a substitute.. Nat. should be viewed as a complementary model to support current BPM life cycles,. Ch. engchi. 17. i n U. v.

(25) 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. Nat. io. sit. y. Figure 4. Business Process Rearrangement and Renaming Model.. n. al. er. Source: Khosravi (2016). Ch. engchi. i n U. v. Moreover, a group of researchers incorporated the ABPMP model proposed in 2009 with external factors outside the organization and proposed a framework to manage the external environment when implementing BPM (Bernardo, Galina, &Pádua, 2017). The model is shown in Figure 4. The distinction of the framework is its focus on considering external resources before implementing BPM projects.. 18.

(26) 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. Figure 5. An External Look into BPM. y. Nat. er. io. sit. Source: Bernardo et al. (2017). While there are several distinctive BPM life cycles proposed recently, their. al. n. v i n models either focused on BPRC and other half of BPM (Khosravi, 2016) hignored e n gthe chi U or were built on a previous framework (Macedo de Morais et al., 2014) that has already been projected into PDCA Cycle by ABPMP (ABPMP, 2013). Therefore, in this study, the ABPMP’s PDCA Cycle is selected as the reference model due to its comprehensiveness and simplicity.. 2.4. BPM Applications BPM has been applied to both the private and public sectors since its beginning (Hammer &Champy, 1993; Khosravi, 2016; vomBrocke &Rosemann, 19.

(27) 2015). Many organizations successfully improved their performance by adopting BPM to manage the business process (Ranganathan &Dhaliwal, 2001; Trkman, 2010). For a more detailed insight into the types of BPM projects that organizations are adopting, a team of researchers and practitioners conducted an investigation into BPM (Reijers, Wijk, Mutschler, &Leurs, 2010). They analyzed a set of 33 completed, industrial BPM projects. The research findings showed that only 3 out of 33 BPM projects focused on improving the support process. One out of the three projects were revealed that a financial service provider aimed to. 政治大 relationship with clients. However, the proceeding did not disclose more details 立 improve its client information management process to assist sales in maintaining. about the other two projects due to confidentiality.. ‧ 國. 學. The previous research finding is consistent with the survey Ranganathan. ‧. and Dhaliwal (2001) conducted that found that organizations did not plan to. sit. y. Nat. manage their support process in the next five years regardless of the high interest. io. er. in it. It is also consistent with the literature review conducted by the author of this. al. research finding that BPM was mainly applied to the primary process of the. n. v i n C organization (Dušan Gošnik, TinhPofuk, i U 2016). As mentioned in e n g2015; c hKhosravi, chapter one, support processes like HRM are critical to maintain daily operations in the Express industry. They are as important as the primary processes; yet. previous research studies ignored them. This paper aims to focus on the application of the BPM Life Cycle to support processes. Therefore, the research fills the gap in this field.. 20.

(28) 2.5. Summary BPM is defined differently among researchers, but there is a consensus on the origins of BPM. In this chapter, we first review the definition of Business Process, which is a set of activities that transform inputs into outputs to satisfy the internal and external customer. Then we look back to the history for a better understanding of BPM. BPM is, in this research, a set of methods aimed to improve the business process and integrate the whole organization in a permanent and continuous manner. There are typical stages that can be identified when. 政治大. organizations conduct a BPM project. The different combinations of these stages. 立. led to numerous research studies on the BPM life cycle. Through qualitative. ‧ 國. 學. analysis, the majority of the BPM life cycle can be projected into the ABPMP’s PDCA Cycle. Moreover, current applications of the BPM Life Cycle mainly focus. ‧. on primary processes with insignificant attention to support process. This research. Nat. n. al. er. io. sit. y. aims to fill this gap and thus to complement the common body of BPM knowledge.. Ch. engchi. 21. i n U. v.

(29) 3. Methodology 3.1. Case Study Methodology According to Yin, “the essence of a case study, the central tendency among all types of case study, is that it tries to illuminate a decision or set of decisions: why they were taken, how they were implemented, and with what result.” Case study methodology is best used when the research question is related to how or why, when it is a contemporary set of events, and when the researcher has little or. 政治大 methodology in the humanities and social sciences for conducting qualitative 立 no control over behavioral events (Yin, 2014). Case study is a standard. ‧ 國. 學. research. Having said that, some researchers used a mix of qualitative and. quantitative data to define a case (Yin, 2014). To illustrate this, case study research. ‧. does not always engage in thick description or detailed observational evidence that. sit. y. Nat. make up a qualitative research (Geertz, 1973). Hence, the case study of this. io. al. er. research includes both qualitative and quantitative data.. v. n. The data of this case study are collected from (1) Documentation: relevant. Ch. engchi. i n U. books and journal articles on BPM. (2) Internal records: the process records archived in the case company. (3) Interview: according to the specific questions planned in this research.. 3.2. Research Subject The case company is a subsidiary of a multinational express company. It hires more than 1,300 employees in Taiwan to keep its daily operations running. Half of the employees are couriers and another quarter of the workforce are. 22.

(30) customer service specialists. The rest of the employees are in sales, finance, IT, and human resources. The organization structure of the case company is shown in Figure 7.. General Management Office. Human Resource. Finanace. IT. Operation. Commercial. Cutomer Service. Figure 6. The organization structure of the case company. 政治大. The case company follows its FOCUS strategy carefully. The FOCUS. 立. strategy guides the company to allocate resources to those assets that can motivate. ‧ 國. 學. employees, drive great service quality, maintain loyal customers, and create a profitable network. The logic behind the FOCUS strategy is simple and. ‧. straightforward. Motivated employees will lead to better service quality. With. y. Nat. sit. better service quality, the case company can earn loyal customers that make up the. n. al. er. io. profitable network for the company, which will be given back to employees as a. i n U. v. motivating technique. The FOCUS strategy, as shown in Figure 8, is a positive. Ch. engchi. feedback cycle that has been clearly communicated throughout the case company.. Motivated Employee. Service Quality. Loyal Customer. Profitable Network. Figure 7. The FOCUS Strategy. The case company is a good representative as it encountered a recruiting problem that resulted directly from the lengthy internal process. Through. 23.

(31) appropriately adopting the BPM Life Cycle, the case company overcame the problem and boosted performance. Besides, the case company has educated its employees in the process mindset since the 1990s. It is thus a company very familiar with business process. Therefore, it is a proper research subject for the case study to verify the BPM Life Cycle application to support processes.. 3.3. Case Study Interview Interviews are an essential source of case study evidence and focus on the oral conversation between the interviewer and respondents (Yin, 2014). The. 政治大. purpose of the case study interview is to exchange opinions. Interviewers may. 立. analyze respondents’ motivations, thoughts, attitudes, and insights into a certain. ‧ 國. 學. topic through interviewing. Moreover, the interviewer can change or come up with. ‧. new questions in accordance to respondents’ answers during an interview (Yuan, 2002). This research focuses on discovering a certain topic. Therefore, the case. y. Nat. er. io. sit. study interview is a proper research methodology to collect first-hand information.. 3.3.1. The Interview Questions. al. n. v i n C h is to reveal how The purpose of the interview e n g c h i U the case company applied. the BPM life cycle to support processes and thus improved process performance. The case study interview questions are then developed as shown in Table 5. Readers should be aware that the actual questions asked during an interview might be slightly different from the original design in according to respondents’ answers (Yuan, 2002).. 24.

(32) Table 5 The Case Study Interview Questions The Overall Questions How do you select a BPM project? How do you conduct a BPM project? Do you conduct other activities that help implement BPM project? The Plan Stage How does the project team make sure the project aligns with corporate strategy? What information is needed during the project? How to collect them? What is the measurement?. 立. The Do Stage. 政治大. ‧ 國. 學. How does the company execute the BPM project?. ‧. How to make sure the project can be carried out successfully? Is there any change in the organization? What is it? The Check Stage. y. Nat. er. io. The Act Stage. sit. When does the company check the performance results of a project?. al. n. v i n Does the company refine theCprocess after the project? h e because n g c hof iwhatUhas achieved so far? Is there any new project brought up 3.3.2. The Interview Respondents Purposive sampling is used in the case study interview. The interview respondents are selected purposively to get the most comprehensive and representative information. Therefore, the whole project team responsible for the BPM project in the case company is selected, which includes one senior corporate advisor and one business process analyst. And two senior recruiters are also interviewed as supporting evidence for the case study. The interviewees’ 25.

(33) information is listed in Table 6. The author of the research conducted five interviews in total. In this research, however, no interviewees were comfortable with recording the interview process. The interview script provided in the appendix is the extension of the interviewer’s notes.. Table 6 Interview Respondents Respondent. Seniority. Senior Corporate Advisor. 15 years. Corporate Advisor is responsible of 治政 Senior facilitating BPM 大project and developing. process talent internally. Met in Taipei office in April 27th 2017 and May 25th 2017.. 1 year. al. n. 3 years. Ch. 2 years. er. io. sit. y. Nat Recruiter B. Business Process Analyst is responsible of analyzing raw data, defining scope of problem and identify root causes in a BPM project. Met in Taipei office in May 8th 2017.. ‧. Business Process Analyst. Recruiter A. 學. ‧ 國. 立. Description. Recruiter A is responsible of recruiting workforce for Operation function,. e nincluding g c h iall. i n U. v. drivers in Taiwan. Met in Taipei office in March 13th 2017. Recruiter B is responsible of recruiting workforce for IT and commercial function, and accounts for onboarding process for new comers. Met in Taipei office in May 23th 2017.. 26.

(34) 3.3.3. Interview Principles The case study interviews of this research abide by following rules: (1) all interviews are conducted anonymously; (2) The interview will not deviate from the topic, and the interviewer must ensure they return to the topic if they do; (3) The order of question raised depends on the situation; (4) The interviewer may raise relevant issues related to the interviewees’ answer; (5) The interviewer will respect interviewees’ answer and not question them; (6) The interviewer will protect the participants’ privacy and confidentiality; and, (7) The interviewer. 政治大. should not record the interview if the interviewees are uncomfortable with it (Yuan,. 立. 2002; Yin, 2014).. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. 27. i n U. v.

(35) 4. Case Analysis 4.1. Case Company Problem According to the industry report from the case company, the total express market in Taiwan has had an average annual growth rate lower than one percent for eight successive years since 2008. The competition among express businesses in Taiwan is fierce. To grow above the market, the case company needed to outperform competitors at speed and service quality consistency. Speed and. 政治大 by the case company’s employees. This is why the FOCUS strategy put employees 立. service quality are the most important criteria to the customers and are delivered. ‧ 國. 學. first.. The core value of the case company comes from its operation team;. ‧. specifically, the couriers. As stated by the senior corporate advisor, “We can afford. sit. y. Nat. the absence of marketing, sales, IT, or HR for weeks, but we cannot afford any. al. er. io. shortage of couriers for one day. They play the most critical role—to keep this. v. n. giant machine running.” Couriers are responsible for the complete appearance of. Ch. engchi. i n U. packages and on-time physical deliveries. As mentioned before, there are around 650 couriers in the case company, and the number is still growing. Any shortage of workforce in operations will lead to overtime work for first-line couriers, and even in the worst case—delivery delay, which puts the case company at risk of losing customers to its competitors. Furthermore, such occurrences would also make the customer service department a battlefield. This vicious cycle is exactly the opposite of the FOCUS strategy, in that unhappy employees deliver poor service quality to customers, which destroys the existing customer loyalty and 28.

(36) breaks the profitable network. Recruiting sufficient workforce in the operations department is the key to avoiding this downward cycle. However, the case company encountered problems recruiting couriers in Taiwan. “Twenty percent of the candidates pursuing courier jobs are not familiar with the formal offer letter process in a corporation and are showing little patience waiting for offer letter. They just reject our offers because we cannot have them onboard immediately, even though our package is better,” recruiter A stated. Candidates can interview and be onboard on the same day in local Taiwan. 政治大 average process time for the case company to approve the compensation report 立. companies, which is impossible for the case company due to internal policy. The. ‧ 國. 學. and generate an offer letter is 9.5 working days, around two weeks. “2 weeks is too long for our candidates,” recruiter A stated. The resourcing team was facing. ‧. rejections because of the lengthy internal process; even though the case company’s. sit. y. Nat. total reward is better than the competitors’. As recruiter A stated, “the. io. al. er. consequences of rejections are terrible. I may need to do the screening and. n. interviews all over again. It is one of the reasons for overtime working, for me and for the couriers.”. Ch. engchi. i n U. v. The case company operates full functions of human resource management in Taiwan, which includes recruiting, compensation and benefits (C&B), people development, employee relations (ER), and occupational health and safety (OHS). The problem mentioned in the previous paragraph is associated with the recruitment process. Typically, a hiring process starts after the hiring manager fills out a requisition form. After recruiters receive the form, they open the position to the labor market, followed by resume screening, intelligence testing, interviews, 29.

(37) compensation approval, and making offers to qualified candidates. As the problem reveals the lengthy process time from the end of the interview to making offers, the approval process of compensation and the offer letter are examined in this research, as shown in Figure 8. Human Resource Compensation & Benefit. Resourcing Screening. Compensation Approval. Interview. People Development. ER. OHS. Offer Letter. 政治大. Figure 8. Target Problematic Process and Their Responsibility. 立. 4.2. The Compensation Approval Process. ‧ 國. 學. 4.2.1. The AS-IS Process. ‧. When the case company identified the problem, the general manager asked. Nat. sit. y. the senior corporate advisor to deal with the problem. Therefore, a project team. n. al. er. io. was formed to improve the hiring process. As the senior corporate advisor stated,. i n U. v. “There are thousands of processes in this company. How did I get into a new. Ch. engchi. project in a short time? Draw the process on a paper or on the computer. Everything gets clear once it’s visualized.” The first step was to document the current (AS-IS) business processes. The project team conducted interviews with recruiters to document the ASIS business processes. “We held interviews separately with different recruiters to collect information. It helped us identify the inconsistency and consistency of how they perform the same task,” the business process analyst stated. The AS-IS approval processes of the compensation report and offer letter 30.

(38) are a serial workflow, meaning that compensation approval process must be completed when the offer letter approval process starts. The compensation approval process starts after the hiring manager told the recruiter his/her final decision. Recruiters prepare the compensation report in physical form, which would then be passed to a HR business partner, the first level manager, the second level manager, the function head, the HR head, and the general manager by couriers. The first level manager is often the hiring manager. After all approvers signed the compensation report, the report would be transported to recruiters and. 政治大. recruiters would hand it to the C&B department, which triggers the offer letter approval process.. 立. ‧ 國. 學. In the offer letter approval process, a C&B specialist prepares the offer letter in physical form that would then be passed to the HR and function heads by. ‧. couriers. After the HR and function heads sign the offer letter, the offer letter would. sit. y. Nat. be carried back to the C&B specialist who would then inform recruiters to reach. io. al. er. out to candidates. The AS-IS process of compensation and offer letter are put on. n. the swim lane in Figures 9 and 10.. Ch. engchi. i n U. v. “It is true that you cannot improve what you cannot measure. We must identify KPIs to monitor the performance,” the senior corporate advisor stated. It typically takes 8.5 working days for each compensation report to be signed and approved, and another working day to complete the offer letter approval process. The average process time from the hiring manager making the final decision to the recruiter reaching out to candidate is 9.5 working days. In addition to process time, the number of damaged reports were also monitored. As stated by business process analyst, “After conducting interviews and 31.

(39) finishing drawing business processes, I started to collected relevant regulations, like policies and national legislation. I also needed to figure out a way to connect the process to corporate strategy.” The purpose of approval process for the compensation report and offer letter is to ensure a sufficient supply of workforce to maintain daily operations, and by doing so, to help achieve the FOCUS strategy. “The point of FOUCS strategy is to motivate employees so that they will provide great service quality to our customers. Any shortage in workforce will just lead to the opposite of that. We need to motivate them, not discourage.” Moreover, an. 政治大 and hiring manager as approvers. As for the national legislation, the Labor 立. internal policy controls the process so that it must include the HR business partner. Standard Acts in Taiwan requires organizations to keep personnel information for. ‧ 國. 學. five years. Therefore, the compensation report and the offer letter need to be. n. al. er. io. sit. y. Nat. .. ‧. archived for legal issues.. Ch. engchi. 32. i n U. v.

(40) 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. Figure 9. The AS-IS Compensation Approval Process 33. i n U. v.

(41) 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. Figure 10. The AS-IS Offer Letter Process. 34. i n U. v.

(42) 4.2.2. The PDCA Cycle In this section, the PDCA Cycle of ABPMP is used to examine how the case company managed the approval process of the compensation report and offer letter in each stage. The Plan Stage The purpose of the Plan stage is to define business context and design business process. As shown in the previous section, the first step the project team takes is to document the AS-IS process, collect internal and external regulations,. 政治大. and connect the process to corporate strategy. “Linking the process to corporate. 立. strategy is critical to communicate the value to all stakeholders involved during a. ‧ 國. 學. project,” the senior corporate advisor stated.. ‧. In addition, the project team was able to identify the disadvantages of ASIS process and develop an improved business process flow for it by combining the. y. Nat. io. sit. collected information. As the business process analyst stated, “several factors that. n. al. er. led to process deficiency were discovered. The report was made in paper form and. Ch. i n U. v. carried by couriers. It caused the long process time spent on transportation and. engchi. waiting. The paper report was also prone to damage, which led to redoing work. Besides, there was no policy and regulation that required a signature on the compensation report, and it didn’t have to be a serial process.” To solve those identified problems, the project team combined the compensation report and offer letter into one report, and decided to digitalize the process by using Microsoft SharePoint 2013. As the senior corporate advisor stated, “We expected a 50% improvement in process time at the beginning. That is 4.75. 35.

(43) working days. We also expected zero ‘damaged’ reports in the TO-BE process.” Other than the actions to understand current business process, the project team held several informal meetings with HR colleagues. “Our job is to bring change to other functions. It is common that people resist change at the beginning. This is why it is so important to create social connection with them. It can more or less reduce their resistance during the project,” the senior corporate advisor stated. The Do Stage The purpose of the Do stage is to commit the designed process to. 政治大. operations. Several initiatives were taken to support successful implementation by. 立. the project team. Firstly, there was a change in the HR organization structure.. ‧ 國. 學. “Recruiters previously reported to the resourcing manager. Now, they report to the HR business partner so that the performance of recruiters is linked to the HR. ‧. Nat. io. sit. partners in this project,” the senior corporate advisor stated.. y. business partner. This change directly increased the engagement of HR business. n. al. er. The project team also modified the responsibility of recruiters, C&B. Ch. i n U. v. specialists, and couriers. Since the compensation report and offer letter is now. engchi. combined, recruiters are responsible for making the offer letter instead of C&B specialists. Besides, the process is digitalized and no longer requires couriers to pass down the report. Before the new compensation process officially went live, the project team held several trainings to orient recruiters, HR business partners, and all managers to the new compensation process. User manuals were also generated to facilitate implementation.. 36.

(44) Lastly, a dashboard was established on Microsoft SharePoint 2013 to monitor in-time performance, which includes the process time and the number of damaged reports. The Check Stage and The Act Stage The purpose of the Check stage and Act stage is to measure against expectations and to react in accordance to the result. “We saw this BPM project as a great success. It not only met the initial goal, but also made a further improvement project possible,” the business process analyst stated. The detail of. 政治大. the results are revealed in the following section.. 立. 4.2.3. The TO-BE Process and Results. ‧ 國. 學. The case company suffered from a lengthy process time that made it. ‧. difficult to recruit local couriers. The project team collected all relevant information to solve this problem, including the current business context, internal. y. Nat. io. sit. policies, and external regulations. Then, the compensation approval process was. n. al. er. combined with the offer letter approval process. A new (TO-BE) compensation. Ch. i n U. v. approval process that complied with all regulations was introduced by the project. engchi. team. The originally serial approval process is now conducted simultaneously. The TO-BE process came along with a change in current responsibility. Since the compensation report is now merged with the offer letter, recruiters are responsible of preparing the offer letter instead of C&B specialist. The TO-BE process is shown in Figure 11.. 37.

(45) 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. i n U. v. Figure 11. The TO-BE Compensation Approval Process This swim lane combined the original compensation and offer letter approval process.. 38.

(46) The TO-BE compensation process began operations in September 2016. By the end of 2016, the project team held a meeting to review the performance results. As the senior corporate advisor stated, When comparing process efficiency in 2015Q4 with 2016Q4, the average process time of generating an offer letter had improved 85.3% to 1.25 working days. Recruiter A also added, No candidate rejected offer due to lengthy internal process since September 2016. Moreover, since the process is digitalized, there has been no incident of. 治政大 might have resulted in damaged paper due to physical transportation, which 立 redoing the report and therefore stretching out the process time. The TO-BE ‧ 國. 學. process also establishes a clear responsibility among approvers and couriers. The. ‧. changes and the performance results of the TO-BE compensation approval process are organized in Tables 7 and 8.. al. er. io. sit. y. Nat. Table 7. v. n. The Changes of the AS-IS Compensation Approval Process Changes  Responsibility  Chain of Command. . Ch. i n U. i e n g c hDescription. Recruiters are responsible of offer letter instead of the C&B Specialist. Couriers do not need to carry reports anymore. Recruiters report directly to the HR business partner instead of the resourcing manager.. 39.

(47) Table 8 The Performance of the TO-BE Compensation Approval Process Measures. 2015 Q4. Expected Performance. 2016 Q4. Improvement Rate (%). Process Time (Working days). 9.5. 4.75. 1.25. 85.3%. Damaged Report (number/quarter). 2. 0. 0. 100%. 政治大 0 0. 100%. Rejected Offer. -* 立. due to lengthy process. ‧ 國. 學. Note. *There are no records archived in the case company.. ‧ sit. y. Nat. The case company successfully solved the hiring problem through BPM.. io. er. This BPM project not only achieved initial goals, but also made another. al. improvement project possible. As stated by the business process analyst, “The TO-. n. v i n C h is developed upon BE compensation approval process e n g c h i U a digital system [Microsoft. SharePoint 2013], which can extract a lot of data from the compensation report and utilize them in another business process. For example, the onboard date can be used in onboarding process.” The reconstructed compensation approval process started another BPM project on the onboarding process.. 40.

(48) 4.3. The Onboarding Process In addition to the TO-BE compensation approval process, another topic was discussed in the review meeting held at the end of 2016—the onboarding process. The case company conducts employee opinion survey (EOS) every year. “The measure we use to examine whether our colleagues are motivated is the result of Employee Opinion Survey. HR scored 72 in 2016, while the global standard is 85. The most displeasing HR service is the onboarding process,” recruiter B stated. Whenever a candidate is hired, the onboarding process is triggered so that. 政治大. all the office supplies, including the computer and employee accounts, will be. 立. prepared on his/her first day at work. However, the process had never met this. ‧ 國. 學. standard. Thus, the same project team was assigned to improve the onboarding. ‧. process.. sit. y. Nat. 4.3.1. The AS-IS Process. io. er. As the senior corporate advisor stated, “we always conduct a BPM project. al. through almost the same steps. We outline the target process first. Then we collect. n. v i n C that are relevant toUthe process. Then we map the internal and external regulationsh engchi process to corporate strategy to help us communicate.” The project team started the project by first documenting the current. onboarding process through interviews. The process began when candidates filled out the employee information form (EIF) on the onboard day. Recruiters collected the EIF and passed it to the C&B department where the information would be sent to the regional office for a global reference check. If the candidate passed the global reference check, his/her information would be typed into the human 41.

(49) resource information system (HRIS). An employee number would be automatically generated one day later. The C&B specialist then passed the employee number to the recruiter who would forward it to the line manager. The line manager then applied for the employee account on a global IT platform. An employee account would be created two days later. The AS-IS onboarding process is shown in Figure 12. The average process time of onboarding is four working days. “Most of the onboarding process is to upload information onto global system. The global. 政治大 little we can improve regarding to process time,” recruiter B stated. Since the AS立 system is scheduled to process requests periodically, not immediately. So there’s. ‧ 國. 學. IS process started on the first day on board, the new hire would have no employee account for the first four days, meaning they cannot do anything if there’s no. ‧. training. “There was no way a new hire could get his/her employee account on the. y. sit. io. n. al. er. stated.. Nat. onboard date. So our goal was to achieve zero failure,” the business process analyst. i n U. v. The project team also collected information about the internal policy that. Ch. engchi. requires recruiters to submit all candidates for the global reference check. The Labor Standard Acts in Taiwan requires all employers to add their employees to Labor Insurance and Health Insurance coverage on the first day onboard. Lastly, the performance of onboarding process directly influenced the FOCUS strategy as mentioned in the beginning of this section.. 42.

(50) 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. Figure 12. The AS-IS Onboarding Process. 43. i n U. v.

(51) 4.3.2. The PDCA Cycle In this section, the ABPMP’s PDCA Cycle is used to examine how the case company managed the onboarding process. The Plan Stage The case company first depicted the current business process, followed by collecting internal and external regulations and mapping the process to the FOCUS strategy. In this stage, the project team realized the main process problem. As the business process analyst stated, “Since the process can only be triggered by EIF, it. 政治大. is the wrong timing to collect EIF that causes the problem.”. 立. Considering all of the above, the new (AS-IS) onboarding process was. ‧ 國. 學. introduced. “We have built the compensation approval process on Microsoft. ‧. SharePoint 2013, on which we can utilize every column in the compensation report.. er. io. sit. Nat. process,” the business process analyst stated.. y. Therefore, we decided to use the same software to facilitate the onboarding. The goal of this BPM project is to make sure that onboarding process is. al. n. v i n C hevery new hire. “We finished on the onboard day for e n g c h i U should have met the goal a long time ago, but we did not,” recruiter B stated. The Do Stage. To commit the TO-BE onboarding process into operations, there is a change in the responsibility. The recruiters are no longer required to forward the employee number to the line manager. Instead, it is now the responsibility of the C&B specialist. Besides, the project team held two trainings for HR functions to orient the 44.

(52) new process. A user manual was also generated for future reference. A SharePoint dashboard was also established to monitor the in-time performance of TO-BE onboarding process. As stated by the senior corporate advisor, “we did not held informal meetings during this project because we conducted the onboarding project right after the compensation approval project. We already built the social connection in the compensation approval project and I could feel there was high morale in the HR team.”. 政治大. The Check Stage and The Act Stage. 立. The purpose of the check stage and act stage is to measure against. ‧ 國. 學. expectations and react accordingly. More details are revealed in the following section.. ‧ sit. y. Nat. io. al. er. 4.3.3. The TO-BE Process. v. n. The 2016 HR function EOS score was low. To address this, the project. Ch. engchi. i n U. team collected all relevant information to improve the most displeasing HR service—the onboarding process. The information collected included the current business context, internal policies, and external regulations. Considering this information, the project team identified the process problem and designed the TOBE onboarding process based on the findings. The onboarding process is now automatically triggered after the offer letter is approved. Several changes were made to support the new process. First, the EIF was collected before new hires are onboard, not when they are onboard. Second, a meaningless action was removed 45.

(53) from the onboarding process. Recruiters now do not have to forward the employee number to the line manager. The C&B specialist can directly forward the email to the line manager after HRIS generated the employee number. However, several actions were unable to be improved because it is out of the scope of a subsidiary’s responsibility. For example, the reference check conducted by the regional office required one working day, and the employee number generated by HRIS was scheduled for another business day. The TO-BE onboarding process is shown in Figure 13.. 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. 46. i n U. v.

(54) 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. Figure 13. The TO-BE Onboarding Process. 47. i n U. v.

(55) The new onboarding process started to operate in March 2017. No idle newcomers have been reported since March 2017. The changes and performance results were organized in Tables 9 and 10. Table 9 The Changes of the Onboarding Process Changes. Description . Responsibility. 立. Process. The C&B Specialist is now responsible for forwarding the employee number to the line manager.. 政治大 New hires are now asked to fill in EIF before the onboard day.. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. al. n Failure of in-time onboarding preparation (incidents) Annual EOS Score. Ch -*. 72. Expected Performance. sit. 2016 Q2. 2017 Q2. Improvement Rate (%). 0. 0. 100%. 85. -**. -**. engchi. er. io. Measure. y. Nat. Table 10 The Performance Results of the TO-BE Onboarding Process. i n U. v. Note. *There were no records archived in the case company. However, the case company failed to deliver in-time onboarding preparation for every newcomer under the AS-IS onboarding process. **By the end of this research, the result of 2017 EOS Score has not yet been published. However, it is expected to be higher than 72.. 48.

(56) 4.4. The BPM Life Cycle Analysis of the Case Company The case study provides an opportunity to verify the application of ABPMP’s PDCA life cycle in Taiwan. ABPMP claimed that there are typical stages in different BPM projects, the Plan, the Do, the Check, and the Act stages. They further identified much necessary information to be disclosed in each stage. This information was also revealed when the case company conducted the BPM project. As the senior corporate advisor stated, “There are common steps we. 治政 always take in each BPM project: to understand the大 current business process, to 立 map the process to FOCUS strategy, to collect internal and external regulations, to ‧ 國. 學. identify proper measures, to redesign the business process, to build social. ‧. connection with the target function, to manage stakeholders, to hold training sessions, to generate user manuals, and to establish the control mechanism.”. al. er. io. sit. y. Nat. The Plan Stage. v. n. According to ABPMP (2013), the purpose of the Plan stage is to define the. Ch. engchi. i n U. current business context and to design an improved business process. In this stage, the inputs, outputs, deliverables, and participants need to be identified. The purpose of the process also needs to align with corporate strategy. Any policy or national legislation that may restrict the business process needs to be discovered. Before starting to design the improved business process, the organization should decide what IT tool will be involved in the project. In the case company, the project team visualized the current process, collected relevant regulations, mapped current process to FOCUS strategy, and 49.

(57) decided the IT tool before designing new process. The steps that are identified when conducting BPM project in the case company are consistent with what ABPMP suggested. Nonetheless, one special action was discovered in the case company, which is not included in the ABPMP’s PDCA Cycle. The case company emphasized the importance of informal meetings with key stakeholders prior to and during the project. This kind of social connection can, as the senior corporate advisor stated, “reduce their resistance against changes.” The informal meeting may be held prior. 政治大. to the project or during the project.. 立. The Do Stage. ‧ 國. 學. According to ABPMP (2013), the purpose of Do stage is to push the new process designed into operation. Several actions were suggested to help implement. ‧. BPM projects; for instance, the changes in work responsibility, the restructure of. y. Nat. n. al. er. io. control mechanism.. sit. the organization, the operational tools that help deployment, and the performance. Ch. i n U. v. In the case company, the project team used different means to help. engchi. implement BPM projects. In the compensation approval process, the project team partially restructured the HR functions to gain the HR business partners’ support. A modification of recruiters’ and C&B specialists’ responsibility was undertaken. Several trainings were held to orient managers to the new system, which came along with a user manual for future reference. An in-time performance dashboard was also established to monitor the process performance. In the onboarding process, the project team did the same things as they did in the compensation approval process except for the organization restructure. 50.

(58) The Check Stage and The Act Stage According to ABPMP (2013), the purpose of Check stage and Act stage is to measure against expectations and react in accordance with performance results. The appropriate actions in the Act stage might be maintaining the process or pushing new directions into the Plan stage. In the case company, the compensation approval process redesign made the following onboarding process improvements possible. The summary details of the ABPMP BPM life cycle and the practice in the. 政治大. case company are organized in Tables 11 and 12. Readers should interpret the table. 立. by observing the first column as different stages. Each stage has its corresponding. ‧ 國. 學. information to disclose and the result found in the case company.. ‧. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. 51. i n U. v.

(59) Table 11 The BPM Life Cycle Analysis of the Compensation Approval Process The Compensation Approval Process in. (ABPMP, 2013). case company. Understand the business context The customer of the process. Hiring Manager. The process output(s). Offer letter and qualified workforce. The process value. Sustain daily operations. 政治大. How the process align with strategy. 立. The process inputs. Maintain sufficient workforce to motivate employee Compensation Report Hiring manager’s decision call/mail. The existence of control. . Labor Standard Acts. . Corporate Policy. io. n. . 5 working days. . 0 damaged report. . Clear accountability. sit. Nat. Ch. y. 9.5 working days. Future performance target. a Design the business process l. ‧. Baseline performance target. 學. The trigger point of the process. er. Plan. Disclosed Information. ‧ 國. Stages. i n U. v. e n gShown c h iin figure 9, 10, 11. The activities that make up the process. The information system used to support. Microsoft SharePoint 2013. the process The deliverables during the process. Shown in figure 9, 10, 11. People take part in the process. Shown in figure 9, 10, 11. The location where activities were. Microsoft SharePoint 2013. performed (continued). 52.

(60) Table 11 The BPM Life Cycle Analysis of the Compensation Approval Process Stages Do. Disclosed Information. The Compensation Approval Process in. (ABPMP, 2013). case company Offer letter is now prepared by recruiters instead of. New or modified responsibility. C&B specialist Recruiters now report to HRBP instead of. Restructuring of organization. resourcing manager Enhancement of information system. The approval process is now automated on SharePoint instead of couriers. Deployment of operational tool Introduction of new touch point. 立. 政治大. ‧ 國. 學. A SharePoint dashboard displaying instant process status and process time . 85.3% improved in process time. expectation. . 0 damaged report. . Clear accountability. al. y. sit. n. direction into plan stage. Push the onboarding process into plan stage. er. io. Maintain current process or push new. ‧. Compare the performance measure to. Nat. ACT. Introduce the system to all managers through formal meeting. Performance control mechanism. Check. Generate user manuals. Ch. engchi. 53. i n U. v.