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Chapter 8: Modeling The Business Direction of the Enterprise

Setting the Scene
The Enterprise Model
Business Units
Goals and Objectives
Problems
Critical Success Factors
Key Performance Indicators
Assumptions
Summary

Part One offered an overview of Designer/2000 tools and introduced the major skills and techniques you need in order to work with these tools. The remaining chapters of the book will enable you to turn Designer/2000 into a major asset for your success in activities such as enterprise and business process modeling, systems analysis and design, and application design and development. So that you can better relate the concepts discussed here with situations you are likely to encounter in real life, these chapters extensively use a fictional company, The American Software Club (TASC). Although fictional, you will see that TASC represents a typical enterprise where analysts equipped with the right knowledge and tools can make a difference. Information about this company will be introduced in appropriate form when the context requires it. Section 8.1.1 offers an initial overview of this company.

The other important character in this book is the person who will set up the information infrastructure to support and stimulate the growth of the enterprise; who will identify problems and offer solutions; who will analyze business needs and propose information systems to meet these needs; and finally, who will design, develop, and deploy these information systems. This person is you, and Section 8.1.2 describes the roles you will play and the qualities you will develop while reading this book.

8.1.1 THE AMERICAN SOFTWARE CLUB

The American Software Club is a mail-order company that specializes in software products for home and office. TASC purchases the products directly from the software companies at discounted wholesale prices, which are negotiated semiannually. TASC is responsible for picking up products from the vendors' warehouses and transporting them to its own warehouses and distribution centers spread across the United States. TASC markets the products through catalogs, published and distributed monthly to its current and potential customers. Customers interested in a product contact their regional sales representative through an 800 number. Besides responding to product inquiries, sales representatives also take orders and proactively contact customers with various promotional offers.

The customer base of TASC can be divided into two major segments. The first one includes corporations that are interested primarily in business software and office suites. The business generated by this segment accounts for 35 percent of the total sales of TASC. The second segment is made up of individual customers who purchase primarily educational software, games, and tax packages. The sales to this segment are highly seasonal, unlike the sales to the first segment, which tend to be constant throughout the year. The Holiday Season at the end of the year is the busiest period for the company. Other peak periods are the last six weeks before April 15, when almost 80 percent of the tax software is ordered and delivered, and the period from mid-August to mid-September, when about 50 percent of educational software products is sold.

For the last five years, the annual sales of TASC have grown by 20 percent, to $60 million posted this year. Currently, the company employs 200 people fulltime. According to data published in business magazines and newspapers, the management of TASC believes it has a 10 percent share in software sales nationwide. Fifty percent of this market is owned by large software manufacturers which distribute their products through their own channels. However, TASC considers these companies its allies rather than competitors and its strategy has been to negotiate with them large-quantity purchases at wholesale prices for products that it can then offer to customers at a modest markup. The remaining 40 percent of the market is shared by three nation-wide retail chains, which offer hardware and software products to individual customers in about 1000 locations across the country. TASC is disadvantaged in competing with these companies because they can obtain products from vendors at larger quantities and deeper discounts. However, being a mail-order business, TASC does not have to incur the cost of maintaining and operating retail stores. The reduced overhead costs allow TASC to offer three out of four products at lower prices than its competitors. In addition, TASC is a major source of distribution for products developed by small companies, often individual entrepreneurs, which are not considered important enough by the large retail chains. TASC intends to maintain this niche market by working closely with the small vendors. As part of the efforts to maintain warm relations with them, TASC publishes a quarterly newsletter and maintains a forum on the Internet dedicated to small and start-up software businesses.

On a final note, TASC is managed by an aggressive team of executives who continuously seek ways to raise the level of customer satisfaction, improve the overall performance of the company, expand its share on the market, and reward achievements of its employees.

8.1.2 YOUR ASSIGNMENT

The Chief Information Officer (CIO) of TASC has brought you in as an outside expert to help the company in strategic planning, to identify and analyze its business areas, to evaluate existing information systems, and to assess the need for additional ones. During the second phase of your assignment, you will design and develop applications identified in the earlier term. As a top-notch software engineer, you will need to wear several hats to meet the expectations of the CIO. In particular, you will be required to serve as:

Strategic Planning Facilitator. You will determine an overall enterprise model for TASC, which will include, among others, the organizational chart, the functional areas, and the data subjects of the company. Furthermore, you will help identify, analyze, and document the company's mission, objectives, goals, problems, critical success factors, and key performance indicators.
Modeler of Business Processes. You will help identify, understand, analyze, and document the company's major processes, and the steps, triggers, outcomes, and flows associated with them.
Reengineering Champion. You will identify processes that, if redesigned and reengineered, will improve the measurable productivity parameters radically. You will make the case for reengineering these processes, and will promote information systems as important factors that will make the new processes succeed.
Business Area Analyst. You will identify and analyze the business areas of the company. In particular, you will create and maintain the data model, the functional hierarchy, and the data flows of each business area.
Database Designer. From the data model for a particular business area, you will derive the physical database schema. You will enhance and customize this schema to support the applications that will use the data items included in it.
Application Designer and Developer. You will design and develop applications that meet needs and requirements identified in earlier stages of your analysis.

As an outsider, you will bring to the table your impartial and objective perspective to the business problems. On the other hand, you will have to adapt to the new environment, become familiar with the company's culture, traditions, and policies, and begin contributing to the project more quickly than in other situations Figure 8.1 contains a list of the top ten qualities you need to have or develop in order to fulfill your assignment successfully.

FIGURE 8.1 The top ten qualities of a successful software engineer.

Problem Solver
Good Listener
Excellent Communicator
Quick Learner
Big-Picture Thinker
Skilled and Knowledgeable
Agent of Change
Leader
Team Player
Self-Disciplined and Self-Motivated

In this job, you need to be able to identify problems and propose solutions. In order to identify important problems in a timely manner, you need to learn quickly how the company conducts its business, and the best way to learn is to listen carefully to internal resources that have been around the block a few times. The solutions you propose should be presented clearly and communicated efficiently. The quality of these solutions will depend on your vision and ability to "think big." Your skills, mastery of tools, and experience also play an important role. Your presence and knowledge should serve as a catalyst for change because as an outsider, you will feel more comfortable taking risks than insiders who may be directly affected by any change in the way the company conducts its business.

Your job does not end with the presentation and articulation of your solutions. In order for these solutions to become something more than nicely bound reports shelved in the company's library, they need to come to life, be accepted, and implemented. Your solutions will be accepted if you enthuse people and rally their support behind them, and you can achieve this by being a leader, not as much by position as by character. Your solutions will be implemented if you are a strong contributor on the implementation team. This result will often require that you work hard in pursuit of your goals with discipline and determination, until you fulfill them.

8.2 THE ENTERPRISE MODEL

In the rest of this chapter and in the following chapters, you will create a highlevel executive model for The American Software Club. This model will serve as the framework around which all the subsequent design and development work will be conducted. The components of the TASC enterprise model are:

Business units and organizational chart
Functional areas 8 Data subjects and entity types
Goals and objectives
Problems ( Critical success factors )
Key performance indicators

After identifying and entering these components in the Designer/2000 Repository, you will be able to identify the scope of the information needs of TASC, divide it into business areas, and prioritize these business areas for the purpose of further analysis and design. . . .

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