Systems thinking is a growing discipline that tackles uncertainty and delivers valuable outcomes when an operational transition is comprehensible and driven — a systematic approach that underlines a more detailed and precise analysis of issues before designing and implementing solutions. Systems thinking is often referred to as a foundation of the learning institution. It is one of a learning organization’s five disciplines. Systems thinking is about the organization as a whole, component experiences, not part-pieces, how processes influence other systems, trends that happen again rather than particular events, time shifts, and feedback about the learning practices. The study evaluates the role systems thinking plays in organizational performance based on the analysis of Amazon’s organization’s work process and makes continuous improvement recommendations.
Amazon uses the business process management (BPM) platform to simplify various business-critical financial system operations. This involves the processing of proprietary financial records for billing, payroll, and accounting procedures by disparate departments around the business. Correctly controlling, automating, and integrating such financial process applications leads to optimizing profitability, eliminating mistakes, and reducing enforcement burden. The organization uses the Appian BPM Suite to simplify activities in various financial operations. In payable accounts, thousands of invoices are processed every day through multiple purchase branches of the company.
The business process management systems (BPMS) are capable of recording and tracking business processes. The workflows will define a business process. Workflows consist of tasks which, in the event of human-machine interaction, are human-based, system-based, or mixed. A BPMS provides an engine for workflow execution that coordinates a business procedure step by step. The BPMS tracks each process instance, and business users may analyze these process instances.
The method cases offer insights into the systems’ progress and explain whether the processes are efficiently performed. In the event of a failed procedure, the process instance illustrates the aspect of the unsuccessful course of action. Companies can improve their operations by tracking, reviewing, and modifying business processes. A BPMS must coordinate with the participants in the transaction to manage and track the business process. Integration problems may occur if BPM is implemented into an organization, especially when legacy software does not have standardized interfaces. Not all applications involved in the business process have simple interfaces for software management or surveillance.
Any exceptions to invoices produced from accounts payable statements have an immediate financial implication. The organization has searched out a technology framework to deliver easy control by combining extreme ease of use and maximum functionality by adding BPM to these processes (“Understanding the health check report,” 2019). The BPM Package from Appian offers a streamlined and responsive user interface in an optimized suite of components, including workflow architecture, rules, templates, content management, monitoring, real-time analytics, identity management, and collaboration.
The best option for meeting these specifications is higher memory servers. The demands for the Appian BPM Suite infrastructure are rising as the company’s application requirements have evolved. More servers and storage are required to handle the increasing quantities of process application data to satisfy the business’s needs. For performance, the company uses predefined server configurations. Nevertheless, the company over-expended disk storage as the Appian BPM engine has high memory requirements (Sattar, 2018).
The other concern was with the Appian BPM file server; it required more storage space as the memory was being exhausted. In total, it took four to six weeks to procure new hardware. To satisfy commercial demand, the enterprise had arrived at the stage that an organization wanted to be more agile with service scaling. Corporate IT aimed to make hardware equipment management simpler, including lease returns, the supply of new hardware, sponsorship of data center movements, and BPM extension to support new geocentric requirements. The group wanted a better system-level approach to allocate essential resources to the company.
How Amazon Operates
Amazon works under a marketplace model where the firm is an individually operated distributor that requires other vendors to list their products and sell them. An online marketplace is a website or app which mediates between clients and firms or entrepreneurs offering business to business and business to customer products and services. In the market, goods or services are not given for themselves (Wright et al., 2019).
Amazon redirects the order to the specific vendor to deliver when an order is put on a client’s seller. The way Amazon operates is to stock the items in their warehouses as the person takes them. Amazon selects, stores, delivers, and records a customer order anytime a person buys one of the items (“About Our Returns Policies,” n.d.). The sellers and Amazon have designed their units to supply numerous items for sale. Amazon provides its own Cloudtail Centers. Other registered dealers ship the commodity to the requested pin code from its inventory and Drop-Shippers tools.
Amazon’s CEO always isolated Amazon from other executives and innovators in its commitment to companies. According to him, a consumer-oriented approach is one of the three concepts upon which Amazon was created. Instead of relying on its competitors, Amazon depends on its customers and needs (Carolan, 2018). The business would be watching for action and then retaliating for its competitors if the reverse had been done. A consumer-oriented approach allows them lead the story.
It is not surprising that Amazon does not want to stop buying ads from Amazon’s automation; they keep recommending items based on what they have just purchased while buying from Amazon. Furthermore, the recommendations are on the homepage, thus, the individual cannot ignore them. Amazon also made the work smoother not only by automating the adverts. It was developed much more tailored for individual customers.
Causal Loop Diagram for Amazon Process
Marketing is the primary engine of business, contributing to revenue, sales and earnings, while at the same time strengthening product diversity and improving sales (represented as R1 and R2). However, these two reinforcement loops are monitored by two classic methods. As seen in B3 in the diagram, the organization is caught off balance as the orders increase sharply and have little time to effectively execute these activities. Satisfaction with the consumer – and with revenues, respectively, – decline. If sales are healthy, the new competition attracts rivals (such as the Oracles), making it difficult for any business to gain the lion’s share (B4).
The displeasure of customers also has other side-effects: it causes the company to try to receive customer acceptance, which is costly (B5) and makes buyers more likely to purchase in another company (B6).
Recommendations for Amazon Process
- The BPM network of the Amazon organization should delete code.
- BPM tailor framework should be customized to particular specifications.
- The company requires a BPM platform convergence with an ERP platform.
- The organization can develop software for all payment transactions.
- Businesses can use the BPM network for social/mobile interfaces.
References
About our returns policies. (n.d.). Amazon. Web.
Carolan, M. (2018). Big data and food retail: Nudging out citizens by creating dependent consumers. Geoforum, 90, 142−150. Web.
Sattar, N. (2018). Selection of low-code platforms based on organization and application type [Unpublished doctoral dissertation]. The Lappeenranta University of Technology.
Understanding the health check report. (2019). Appian Documentation. Web.
Wright, L. T., Robin, R., Stone, M., & Aravopoulou, E. (2019). Adoption of big data technology for innovation in B2B marketing. Journal of Business-to-Business Marketing, 26(3-4), 281−293. Web.