1. Read the extract carefully and apply the problem-solution pattern of analysis to it. Use numbers only to refer to each answer. (5marks each)

Process Reengineering at IBM Credit

(1) IBM Credit finances the computers, software and services sold by IBM Corporation. (2) The company is considered one of the world's most profitable publicly- traded companies. (3) Processing a finance application usually took between six days and two weeks. (4) The application wound its way from the credit department to the pricing department, to an administrator who wrote out a formal quote letter. (5) When IBM Credit realized that processing an application actually took only about 90-minutes, and the rest of the normal processing time was spent with the application sitting on a pile on a specialists desk waiting to be looked at. (6) They decided to reengineer the entire process. (7) Heres what IBM Credit did: The four specialists who previously processed the application were replaced by a generalist called the deal structurer, who processed the application from start to end using templates on a new computer system which provided all the data and tools each specialist commonly used. (8) The results of the reengineering program were: Turnaround time was reduced from a typical 7 days to 4 hours without any increase in staff numbers, IBM Credit has been able to achieve a hundred-fold improvement in productivity. (9) It can now handle 100 times the number of credit applications that were handled before reengineering was undertaken. Source: (Adapted from Grant 2008)

Adopted from Grant 2008)

a) The starting situation presented in sentence number -----------

b) The problem presented in sentence number---------

c) The underlying cause of the problem is presented in sentence number -----------

d) Solution has been proposed in sentence number ----------

e) Evaluation of the solution presented in sentence number -------