Chapter 11 Managing Knowledge 469 INTERACTIVE SESSION: ORGANIZATIONS ALBASSAMI'S JOB IS NOT FEASIBLE WITHOUT IT If you live in a country with a diverse geography and There is replication between the server at head- a climate characterized as being harsh, with a dry des- quarters and the client's branches. Throughout the ert and great temperature extremes like the Kingdom replication, branches' data is sent to the server and of Saudi Arabia (area: 2.1 million square kilometers). aggregated to create the most updated database ver- and you need to move from one city to another, sion, and then sent back to the branches. This means where the distance could be some thousand kilome- every branch has the most recent version of the client ters, you have two choices: to drive, or to fly and ship list, trucks' availability, and new shipping contracts so your car via a car transport carrier. Many people in that any customer is able to deal with any branch at the Kingdom prefer the second option. This has cre- any time. ated a market for car transportation in the Kingdom The business process starts when the customer that is the largest in the Middle East. Albassami was goes to a branch to ship his car to a destination within established to respond to these market needs. The shipping areas, and the branch then creates a shipping Albassami International Group is considered one of agreement. As the database is sent from the branch the leading land transporters in the Middle East. to HQ every 30 minutes, an aggregated version of the The estimated size of the car transportation mar- database of all branches is available at HQ and there- ket, both inside the Kingdom and with neighboring after sent back to all branches. The recipient branch countries, is about 2 billion Saudi riyals and is increas- will create a receipt entry on the system upon arrival ing considerably annually. There are more than a mil- of the truck and then an SMS message is created and lion cars transported inside and outside the Kingdom. sent to the customer, who will then go to the destina- Albassami International Group owns the largest fleet tion branch to receive the car. of carriers in the Middle East. The shipping information system used at At present, the group is operating all over Albassami maintains all the sender information such the Kingdom and extends throughout the Gulf as the sent car, the truck number, the sender and Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, Syria, Lebanon, receiving branches, and it also sends an SMS mes- and Jordan. Throughout these years the company has sage to the client acknowledging the arrival of the car. focused on how to maintain business leadership in The system also records the client's data, and holds order to achieve safe and fast transportation, maintenance information. Linking the data of vehicle Every day there are more than 1,000 shipping con- maintenance centers with the transportation service tracts, including 2,000 to 2,500 bills of lading daily helps to enhance company performance and achieve between the main branches. With the introduction of better customer service. The system also enables stan- its new division of Express transportation in 2003, the dard reports to be provided to top management and group owns and allocates 170 heavy duty, medium, head sectors about the productivity of each branch, and light vehicles of various types for its door-to-door resulting in accurate identification of needs for differ- courier services, which operate all over the Kingdom, ent regions and thus proper budget allocation. In addi- covering more than 45 locations. It was therefore tion, the system allowed a better audit on all drivers impossible to properly handle and control the endless behavior by using the output of the vehicles'tracking number of daily work options and orders related to information. Proper performance monitoring resulted these operations at a perfect level of service without a in adequate employees' appraisals and consequently robust computerized system. The system needed the loyal staff facility to serve specific sectors in the organization, All business processes are facilitated by the ship- in addition to providing information throughout the ping system, and the knowledge extracted from the group. central database has enabled the management team to The system is based on clustered Dell servers make sound investment and operational decisions and running Windows 2003 and connected to over 270 therefore helped the business maintain its success and Windows XP clients. The database management sys- leadership in the Kingdom. tem, used as the backbone of the system, is Sybase Adaptive server, whereas clients use SQL Anywhere. 470 Part Three Key System Applications for the Digital Age Sources: Michael Fitzgerald, Predicting Where You'll Go and what You'll Like, The New York Times, June 22, 2008: Erick Schonfeld, "Location-Tracking Startup Sense Networks Emerges from Stealth to Answer the question: Where Is Everybody?" TechCrunch.com, June 9, 2008, "Macrosense," sensenetworks.com, accessed July 2008; Caroline McCarthy, "Meet Sense Networks, the Latest Player in the Hot "Geo' Market," news.cnet.com, June 9, 2008. Case contributed by Dr Ahmed Elragal, German University in Cairo CASE STUDY QUESTIONS 1. What systems are described here? What valuable information do they provide 2. What value did the IT/IS investments add to Albassami? 3. How did implementing the shipping Information System address the business needs and informa- tion requirements of Albassami