Question 2

The company RFC encounters some difficulties in its payment processing system. Re-engineering might solve some of the issues faced by its managers.

First of all, a full understanding of the five different problems RFC listed in this case study is necessary. Althought each one of these problem is unique, affects different part of the organisation and have their own consequences, they all come from the same origin:

Complexity of information management and communication

Process too slow

Here are some possible changes that would improve the payment processing.

Eliminate the possibility for the customer to pay in the Home Office directly. Indeed, the Home Office have huge difficulties to find informations about the payment, leading therefore to lots of errors of payments (Problem #1). This action will simplifies the payment processing and reduce factors of errors and clerical work (Problem #3). Beside, it will also reduce the time needed to make necessary file updating.

There is a delay between the moment a payment is made, and the moment when this fact is taken into account in the business process database. Alas, no matter the changes in the processes, there will always be a little delay. In this case, batch payment processing is run every evening to update all data centrally, so the delay is at least 1 day long.

An action would be to urge managers of the branchs to hurry to update particuliary important file each time they have to make a modification on it. The Outstanding Loans File, which is a major document, is always several days out of date, leading to numerous problems:

Problem#2: Angry customers complain about receiving one reminder, even though they have already paid, even if after the due date. I don't think mistake of that kind can be avoided, since the delay would always exist, even made smaller. So maybe, to avoid