The Analysis of the PICQMEW (Situation)

Investcore Investment management is a financial service business that operates

in the Asset management sector. In order to maximise shareholder wealth and
earn a good return on investment certain decisions making procedure should be
thoroughly taken. Most of these decision making involves buying, selling or
holding stocks that affect our funds performance and risk exposure. The
Business Intelligent Centre (BIC) functions as a library and information centre
that supports the asset management business cluster. It is therefore quite
imperative to understand the main clients and users (customers) of the BIC,
these constitute of the credit analysts, fixed interest portfolio managers, equities
analysts, equities portfolio managers, hedge funds teams, stock market dealers,
academics such as MBA and CFA students and new business consultants. This
section will discuss the PICQMEW of the business intelligent centre (BIC).

1. Process
The below process flow diagram of the BIC will indicate the flow of the
operational process starting from the client (Investcore Investment Management
Teams) and to the overall stakeholder (end user). The major flows in the process
will indicate, how this department add value to the client, bottlenecks within the
process, wastages, and certain gaps that creates opportunities for improvements
will also be indicated.
Process flow Diagram (concern)

The Fish Bone method (Question)

Values that is shared across departments in order to indicate the value chain of
this department and the ability to BIC The process flow diagram will be used to
illustrate the current situation at the Business Intelligent centre where this study
will be based.
A fishbone tool will be used to diagnose the root cause of the problems that
currently exists.
The 3s Model (Answer)

will also be applied to certain processes that require improvements and

modifications.

2. Inventory

Investcore Investment management is a service business that operate in the

financial sector, therefore no inventory is held with an intention to make a sale or
for profit generation. The Business Intelligence centre does hold books,
newspapers, magazines, journals, Annual reports and AFS reports within the
library book shelves, and store room for the purpose of research demands.
2.1 Just in Time - Service at a rate of customer demand
a) Books The number of books available at the library increase as the
purchase request is received by the employees. Academic supporting books such
as CFA books are also bought on an annual basis based on the request from the
Investcore Investment Programme which recruits graduate every year.
The request to order book purchasing system ensures that there are no funds
used to purchase books that are costly, unnecessary and sees to it that funds are
used efficiently.
b) Subscriptions To control the newspaper subscriptions and magazines, we
have a subscription control sheet that is maintained on a monthly basis by our
senior information officer. All clients (employees) who are within a 3 month
subscription renewal period are followed up with to ensure that the BIC does not
provide subscription to someone who might be unavailable , relocated or do not
need the renewal in the following year. All newspaper subscriptions are
registered for the daily mail deliveries that the BIC receives on a daily basis,
these papers are stored in our library shelves for 3 months for research purposes
in case a client might require a direct newspaper reference from a dated paper
article.
The magazines subscriptions mails are also controlled in the similar process.
Magazines, especially the international published such as the economist have
online subscription, this option is mainly by our top research team who are
always travelling and going offsite for meetings. The essential aspect of this
process is to reduce waste in desk delivery, storage space on the clients who
receives the daily physical papers every day. The BIC does not oversupply mails
(physical and digital) needed by the clients within the business, thus keep their
supply within a controlled system.

3. Capacity
In order to determine the current capacity level of the BIC, An analysis has
been done to indicate the type of capacity that this department operates
under. To determine the category level, a further discussion regarding the
implication will be alluded below.
Staff
The Library has three employees who individually handle separate
specialised duties. Their allocated tasks have deadlines allocated as
depicted on diagram 1 below with the estimated time spent on each task
is indicated on Diagram 2.

Time Estimated per day per Deadline Category

25
20
15

Average Scale

10
5
0

Daily

Monthly

On demand

Weekly

Category

Estimated Time per task per day

Client Request
Wall of Fame Updates
Coffee Self Service Station
Annual Reports printing
Storage Maintenanace
Shelve Maintenanace
Job Tasks

Book Purchases
Online Database Maintenance
Reporting Operations ( Annual reports & AFS)
Daily Newspaper client deliveries
Subscription Admin
cataloging
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Hours

Diagram 1 shows that there is a massive gap between the deadline

categories required for each task per hour duration, thus meaning that on
a day to day average basis there is sufficient time available to be used for
additional tasks within this business or within the cluster (Investcore
Investments management).
Clients
The main client of the BIC is the Investcore cluster team namely Sanlam
investment management teams, with the majority of clients coming from
the credit team, equities team, dealing desk, Economist team. These
clients send us requests depending on the research stocks that they need
to conduct, present or model. It is imperative in this phase to consider the
fact that, not all stocks or companies that are on the research list will be
traded on and analysed during that period. As an example out of 150
company stocks reporting at the same period only 10 stocks might be

analysed. Thus means that there is capacity to include other clients within
the business for efficiency.
Resources Available
The BIC lacks recent updated resources such as software database,
comfortable library furniture that can be installed to ensure that the work
flow between the analysts and BIC is well maintained. As a library and
information house, there are a number of people who visit the library for
online research, study or hold small meetings. But due to a lack of
adequate resources those needs are limited leaving most people opting
for alternatives such as their own desks and/or meeting rooms.
Excess Capacity
The daily operational activities of the BIC are quite limited as compared to
other similar departments particularly relative to other public or an
academic library. This is because they are focused on serving a group of
investment professionals and they focus on that segment.
With the recent technology and innovation improvement this department
has a greater opportunity to move from paper dominance business into a
digitalised business. This will also enable even greater time available to
bring about new improvements in the business.

The BIC has excess capacity, there is a massive room for growth and
improvement if this department receives sufficient supply of resources for
support. The client base that is served by this department is too narrow,
yet there are lots of employees who might need the service within the
business. A client base gap should be bridged to allow this space to
operate at its optimal efficient level.
Quality
The BIC as an information house of the teams within Investcore Investment
management values quality as an important tool in the service delivery process.
Quality at source is a principle that the BIC team utilises when delivering the
service to their clients. This principle is backed by the Total Quality management
elements involving Continuous process improvement , Employee participation in
which a 3 peoples team at the BIC are involved in making process
improvements.
To assure quality, the BIC provides accurate information on demand, effectively
manages time and follow ups on requests as well as the queries to ensure that
the service delivery to our clients is excellent . Certain job tasks involving
Catalogue maintenance, and ensuring that the reporting operations work flow
process is efficient and effective amongst the three staff.
We have sourcing agent (personnel 1) who requests the reports from the source,
personnel 2 downloads the matching pdf documents and ensures that they

match the sourced hard copied document before they are shelved. The last
personnel captures the information on the database for our clients to receive.
The information process is checked and rechecked by the main person
(employee 1) who ensures that the right information is sourced and captured first
the right time. The work flow process also ensures that certain errors such as an
integrated report without the annual financial statements are rectified during this
process.
To make clarity of the defect or worst case scenario in our work flow process can
be that a small mistake such as a typo can cause a major effect in the
organisation as a whole. If our client (credit analyst) has a client (external) that
requires funding for a certain project or possibly for business turnaround, the
client will need to make a presentation on the reasons for the cash demand. If we
had the incorrect name for our research there wont be any information available
in the catalog or in our shelves to assist the credit analyst with his research. This
will also cause delay in the whole process involved to provide funding for our
client external client and we will lose out on the potential future interest that
could have been earned from the party.
There is a simplified process amongst the three staff members ti ensure that
quality is maintained. This ensures that mistakes are captured.
The quality and not quantity matters in this business, 10 small equities caps
might require research material from the BIC for an inflow of 2 billion to the
business (IIM) and 1 equities company might require research material for a 10
billion rands investment into our business.
Quality at the source and Total Quality management elements are very
fundamental to the Business Intelligence centre Operations.
Measurement
Productivity Measurement of the BIC
In order to be operationally efficient the library has the following inputs involved
in their service delivery. There are three staff members available, IT Support for
the computers, Bloomberg terminus and software, meeting desk, book shelves,
magazine shelves, one study desk and small lounge meeting area. The number
of hours (labour hours) of each employee and the resources involved are quite
difficult to measure compared to the service delivered because this department
operates as middle man to provide information to our Investment teams.
The magazine and newspaper articles features by our portfolio managers on the
moneyweb, finweek, and financial mail can be counted as output that has been
produced by the business intelligent centre due to the research support that was
given. The Investcore Investment teams release about 10-15 written articles to
the finance and investment media in a year.

Environment
To support the overall strategy of the firm (Investcore Investment management),
the processes within the library are environmentally considerate. The annual
reports that are sourced from different companies enable IIM and the Business

intelligent centre to reduce waste in paper printing. The business uses original
copies that are issued to the supplier to save on the cost of printing and the
wastage of paper and trees.
As an organisation operating in the financial service environment, we have
regulations that protect the rights of those who supply information such as
authors and we also ensure that requests by our clients align to the regulation
standards that govern the industry.
Investcore Investments is under new leadership, on Thursday the 16 th our head
of legal announced via e-mail the departmental restructure of the legal
departments to be separated in order to better serve the clients and the
business. This ensures that the Environment management system of Investcore
Investment management and the passion to see growth in the environment and
as a business.
The BIC also utilises the PDCA model to maintain their environmental management system
(EMS) parallel to the businesss direction. This enable the department to stay relevant and to
grow with the industry.
Workforce
Workforce planning is done to ensure that we have the right people at the right
time, the most fundamental goal is to ensure that the business understands the
direction that the work space is heading. Without a good workforce plan it will be
difficult for the business to achieve its business objectives.
The business Intelligence centre is going through a recent change in workforce
due to the change of the work context. The business would plans to move from
the old traditional way of manual utilisation and paper environment into a digital
space in order to improve their service level to clients.

Current workforce
The Business intelligent Centres plan is to move into the digital space in order to
operate in the level similar to other library of its size. The project involved with
this transition requires new talent that will refresh the culture, streamline the
operation management and introduce a new service that will enhance the
competitive advantage. Amongst the 3 staff members mentioned, there is one
contractor whose role will cease in May 2016 in order to acquire an employee
that will stir the business into the new way operation. The BIC aims to employ a
staff member who has IT knowledge and library experience so that the migration
into the new digital space can become a smooth transition.
Due to a lack of workforce planning there has not been a clear strategic channel
that aligns the BIC and the employees towards a long term plan. These is no
documented process of how things operate due to the leadership that has been
heading the place for over 13 years. The lack of succession plan is a concern that
should be prioritised. Training and development will be needed to support the
new project plan, this will involve the staff and the users of the new system.

As discussed under capacity topic, the BIC is underutilised, thus involving some
level of wastage due to opportunities untapped. The new recruit is expected
notice these similar type of gaps and assist in making the business a success.
Succession planning is important in every organisation, currently the Business
Intelligent centre has no next in line manager that can assist with detailed
operations of the library. This is also a workforce planning that needs attention to
management and to the current existing employees.