Because the business process management course is designed to assist a student to better understand and appreciate how a business process(es) contributes to the overall success of a strategy which in turns contributes to a business gaining a competitive advantage over its rivals within the industry in which it competes and ultimately the profitability of a business, an individual project is required to demonstrate the conceptual understanding and practical application of the material of this course.

The individual project is due the last (10th) week the OL course. The project will require each student to identify a single strategic initiative, a single competitive advantage and evaluate a single major process within a business. Note that the strategic initiative, competitive advantage and the single major process MUST support and reinforce each other. The project will blend the two aspects of the business process management course, namely weeks 1-4 understanding the elements of strategy and competitive advantage and weeks 5-10 relating a specific business process, methods and techniques to the company's strategic initiatives and mapping the specific process to demonstrate how the improve process contributes to the improved overall performance of the business. The project will require each student to submit a 10 page (minimum) Project paper - double spaced, 10 point type, including appropriate graphs and flow charts and must, as a minimum, address the following:

1. Identify a strategic initiative for a (your business) or one that you research.

2. Define the competitive advantage that the strategic initiative provides the business (Quality, Speed to Market - Product Development, Customer Loyalty, Innovation, Low Cost Provider, or, or, or ...).

3. Identify a major process issue (bottleneck) that is either contributing to or preventing the competitive advantage from being fully achieved.

4. utilize the balanced scorecard model to link (top to bottom), your strategic initiative, competitive advantage with the particular business process (chosen by the student). Pay particular attention to the process phase of the model describing how the business process supports the strategic initiative and competitive advantage.

* You must create and define a goal, objective and carry that objective throughout the Balanced Scorecard model, as detailed and outlined in the assigned reading article "Linking the Balanced Scorecard to Strategy".

5. Define the process flow and map the "as is" and "should be" process that has been selected to support the strategic initiative.

6. Assign metrics (KPI'S) to measure the performance of the process that you have chosen. Your metricsmust apply to both the "as is" & "should be" process models to determine improvements.

7. Calculate the cycle time of both the "as is" and "should be" re-engineered process to assess process improvements and explain the reasons for the improvement.

8. Explain how the re-engineered process map contributes to the successful execution of the business strategy using the business scorecard as a framework for discussion.