it service improvement through total quality management

International Journal of Information and Computer Science Volume 2 Issue 7, November 2013 www.iji-cs.org

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IT Service Improvement Through Total Quality Management M Reza Abdi*, Farideh Delavari Edalat2, Ibrahim Al Shutbi3

Bradford University School of Managemnt Emm Lane, Bradford, West Yorkshire, BD9 4BG, UK *[email protected]; *[email protected]; *[email protected] Abstract

This paper aimed to apply the relevant knowledge of Total Quality Management (TQM) theories and principles to facilitate improving Information Technology (IT) products/services practices. A TQM-business framework was proposed to link TQM elements and business performance factors in IT organizations. The IT business performance criteria were evaluated with respect to the TQM elements through a case study. The responses to the questionnaire survey conducted in the company under study were explanatorily analysed and the expected values from the responses were assigned to the corresponding elements for critical analysis of the decisive criteria. Finally, to reflect the TQM customer focused approach, a Customer Complaint Information System (CCIS) was proposed to monitor, measure and respond to the current significant level of the complaints at the company along with formulation of a customer satisfaction measurement (CSM) initiative based on the system parameters and the input data.

Keywords

Total Quality Management; Information Technology; Analytical Hierarchical Process; Customer Complaint Information System

Introduction

This study aimed at exploiting the potential impact of applying TQM theory through proposing TQM-implementation elements through a case study in Dubai Holding. Accordingly, the current statue of implementation of the proposed TQM elements was explored and the recommendations for improving future business performance in the company’s IT department were derived. In particular, the research will focus on those TQM elements which are directly concerned with customers, employees and service quality. Dubai Holding Group Information Technology Department (DHGITD) was selected for undertaking a feasibility study of TQM implementation due to: 1) the IT service nature of the company’s business, 2) availability of the required information, and 3) the willingness of the company’s managers for cooperation with the researchers and their effective participation in

the case study. In particular, the paper was intended to achieve the following research objectives:

− To propose TQM implementation elements and business performance elements

− To explore the current situation of the proposed TQM implementation elements and business performance at DHGITD.

− To derive suggestions and recommendations for proper TQM implementation in DHGITD in order to enhance and improve its business performance in the future.

Key TQM Elements for IT Organizations

The objective of TQM in IT organisations was to ensure the quality of product and services in terms of software and hardware which are mainly computer based information system. Quality management is crucial for IT system as information is one of the most valuable assets of any organization, managerial decision making and operations and it also supports the strategy of the organization (Ashmore, 1992). Because of the increasing demand of the information in organizations, IT managers and professionals should place more focus on quality and business value product and services provided by the IT functions.

There is a lack of adequate case studies and adaptive methodologies and/or best practices, particularly in recent years, in the area of TQM implementation in IT organisations for their services enhancement. Furthermore, some IT organizations which practice TQM, have wasted much amount of time, energy and resources due to an unfitting TQM implementation approach. The reasons for the failure could include designing a lot of activities and focus on processes and activities only, rather than the factors which influence customers and IT professionals. Continuous process improvement can also include documentation process, analysing, and measuring all activities performance. Systematic improvement requires dedicated support

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www.iji-cs.org International Journal of Information and Computer Science Volume 2 Issue 7, November 2013

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from software developers and managers, and that a proper process pays for itself in improved quality and efficiency in IT organisations.

Considering the literature and the authors’ experience in the area of IT quality management, the following key elements were found to be crucial factors for TQM implementation in the IT department.

Top Management Commitment

Top management commitment is considered as one of the crucial factors to the application of the TQM to IS. Successful quality programs are mostly the result of visionary leadership willing to invest energy and resources in order to champion the process and lead the people towards achieving the goals (Stylianou and kumar, 2000). On the other hand, TQM would affect manager’s opinions on numerous characteristics of daily activities in the company (Talib et. al. 2011), particularly in the employees’ role in continuous improvement of quality in service industries.

Top manager can adopt a more visionary approach for how TQM application in IS could respond to customer needs eagerly, meaning that top management need to develop creativity in how to constantly reinforce customer focus approach, process improvement , and involving others as necessity. In this study, IT managers and professionals were considered as decisive actors in implementing TQM in IT organisations.

Customer Focus

The front desk professionals like the help-desk and the consultants communicate a lot with the customers in the company; who exactly know what the customers want, but the result shows that the team is not customer focused. The relationship between the customer focus variables and the employees apparently is strong, which proves that any change on the customer focus will certainly change the customer satisfaction. Arguably, as a very crucial element in maintaining the customer relationship with business, this element does not indicate the product or service itself, but reflects how the employees deal with the customers, in addition, it is worthwhile mentioning that one of Dean and Bowen (1994) principles of TQM is the customer focus, which is involved with improving relations with customers towards customer satisfaction and awareness of the importance of IT services.

Quality System Improvement

Quality system is defined as the organizational structure, procedures, processes and resources needed

to implement quality management (ISO 8402, 1994). In this study, quality system improvement means to design organizational structure, procedures, and processes, work instructions that support the customer oriented approach and accelerate the process among the service and product stakeholders.

Work Instructions

Work instruction consists of detailed work documents, which can guide people in conducting specific work. It should be noted that existing documents and characteristics of the organization should be the basis for drawing up work instructions, which must be reviewed by different people from th euser’s/ designer’s point of view.

IT Organization Structure

TQM requires flexibility in terms of communication amongst all quality management stakeholders in the organizations; , as well a shift from vertical lines of communication toward horizontal communication across departments, organizational levels, functions. To solve problems and enable more rapid implementation of change and any corrective actions needed by the organization, it is necessary to adopt open and informal lines of communication channels. Horizontal coordination is encouraged based on flow of work processes across functional areas through mechanisms such as cross functional teams (Deming, 1986). The simplicity of TQM processes is unlikely to be found in machine structures-

An IT organization with a professional structure tends to be more open against demand and/or technology changes in order to match with TQM elements. The continuous improvement in this manner is more likely to be effective in companies with flexibility oriented professional structures operating under the assumption of learning and adapting to change for survival. Continuous improvement under TQM requires less direct and hierarchical control and greater indirect control. Hence, under professional structures and the TQM practice, control shifts from vertical hierarchies to horizontal process flows and exists in definitions of quality, performance measures, and core quality values.

Employee Focus

In addition to customer focus, employee focus is also crucial to the IT business performance. Different aspects of employee satisfaction must be noted precisely including the following elements:



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Employee Participation

Sila and Ebrahimpur (2005) have conduced 347 surveys on TQM and found employee participation among the top seven most commonly identified TQM factors. TQM is a commitment to continuous improvement of work processes from everyone in the organization with the goal of satisfying internal and external customers. In implementing TQM in IT organisations, employees empowerment requires information, skills and resources; and it is the management’s task to empower the employees by adopting the appropriate strategies for the given type of work environment.

Employee Recognition and Reward

Recognition and reward are due for the outstanding performance of an individual, team division in the organization; which are important elements of TQM improvement program (Dale, 2007). IT organisations must establish platforms for proper compensation in order to encourage and distinguish the individuals or team effort for quality improvement. Employees should understand the reward and penalty system, the top management also must encourage people for their valid and positive suggestions. Reward and recognition systems might include working condition improvements, salary promotions, position promotions, monetary or non-monetary rewards, and financial awards for excellent suggestions. IT organizations that are serious about the achievement of quality and customer satisfaction must integrate these aspects of TQM into their recognition and reward system.

Education and Training

Several researches viewed that education and training is one of the most significant elements for successful TQM implementation. IT companies should consider employees as valuable, long-term resources worthy of receiving education and training throughout their career. Moreover, adequate resources should be made available for education and training. The education and training costs should be viewed as investments rather than costs. The participation of employees and managers in training sessions will enhance the quality of the immediate sessions and also help reduce the “gaps among the ranks”. This will create an environment for teamwork and involvement in the quality system implementation.

Quality education and training may include courses in IT in different levels for different educational backgrounds of the employees, quality awareness, and

basic quality management methods, such as analytical methods, problem solving methods.

Design of Product and Service

The objective of good design of product or service is to satisfy the customer by meeting their actual or anticipated meets and expectations. All IT products and services can be considered having three aspects, first is the concept, which is the understanding of the nature of the use and the value of the service or product, secondly, a component of the product and services that provide the benefits defined in the concept, and thirdly, the process that defines the way in which the component product and services will be created and delivered. Based on the review on the TQM and the problem statement, the specific TQM elements: service design, quality system improvement, customer focus, employee participation, and recognition and reward, and education and training were investigated and examined through a case study.

Research Methodology via an IT-TQM Conceptual Framework

The research methodology includes a cycle of theory building, built based on integration of the TQM concepts and principles, literature review, the AHP theory and the authors’ expertise; and theory testing which was performed through a case study at DHGITD. Accordingly, as shown in Figure 1, the key TQM elements and the key business performance variables can be derived with suitable definitions and adjustments of their associations within an integrated framework. The conceptual framework consists of six TQM implementation elements arranged into one distinct segment, and three business performance elements arranged in another cluster. The major connection reflects the relationship between TQM and business performance, whereas the key IT business performance elements are influenced by the key TQM elements. For instance, customer satisfaction is influenced by product and service quality, and customer focus via a CCIS, which acts as a data-base system to facilitate recording and organising the customers’ positive/ negative feedback and/or complaints over time. Since the customer focus is considered as the most important TQM factor influencing the company performance, a customer satisfaction measurement (CSM) has been proposed to measure the product/ service performance based on the customers’ views and complaints with the system’s responsiveness in terms of service delivery and time, which are all recorded in the CCIS data base.



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FIGURE 1 THE OVERALL INTERACTIONS BETWEEN TQM AND

BUSINESS PERFORMANCE ELEMENTS

Comparably, employee satisfaction is affected by internal factors such as employee participation, recognition and reward and education and training; and product and service quality is influenced by quality system improvement and product and service design. Furthermore, there might be a sort of interdependency between elements within each major segment. For illustration, there is an interconnection between education and training and product/service design. Moreover, customer satisfaction is influenced by the employee satisfaction. In fact, employees deal with customers and might be knowledgeable and educated. However, if he/she is not customer oriented or happy of his/her occupational service, this will impact the quality of service delivery, and consequently, the customer satisfaction will be affected.

The connecting lines appeared in Figure 1 indicate correlations between the connected boxes (elements). Individual importance of each element with an independent value from 1 to 5 was derived from the case study and then shown in a bracket in the corresponding box. The current values shown in the figure reflect the overall results of the case study described in section 8. The volume of influence of the key elements on each other will be examined through the AHP model for the case study. The CSM value will be calculated as an total measure to customer satisfaction within CCIS.

The research methodology was then developed based on the conceptual framework and analytical modelling

that is intended to facilitate quantification of the influence of corresponding qualitative/quantitative elements through a questionnaire survey undertaken in the company. As shown in Figure 2, the research methodology consists of exploring the key elements of TQM and business performance to construct a conceptual framework to be linked to an AHP model in order to analyse the key elements through a case study at DHGITD. The case study was constructed upon a questionnaire survey in which its components are derived from the conceptual framework, which consisted of the influencing elements and their interconnections to be ranked by the responders. Accordingly, the expected value of each element (box) will be used to reflect the importance of the element with respect to TQM/business performance. In order to facilitate analysis of the framework elements and their importance, an Analytical Hierarchical Process (AHP) model, which reflects the key elements of TQM and business performance, was developed.

FIGURE 2 FLOWCHART OF THE RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

Data Representation and Critical Analysis

Employee questionnaire responses consist of five linguistic scales: strongly agree, agree, average disagree and strongly disagree.

The overall result of 2.97 presents customers are unsatisfied with the department IT services and products. It can be concluded that customer satisfaction is influenced by Customer Focus, Employee Satisfaction and Product and service quality elements. Some of the customers might be unsatisfied with the department quality system, while some of



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them might feel that they are not important to department; and some of them might perceive the departments service design poor.

Figure 3 presents both values of the TQM elements and the business performance elements, which are around the overall average i.e. 3.00, indicating that company performance regarding TQM and business seems to be contiguous. However, employee satisfaction, as a business performance element, gains the lowest rate among all the other elements.

FIGURE 3 TQM ELEMENTS AND BUSINESS PERFORMANCE

VARIABLES

Critical Analysis Using the Proposed AHP Model

The expected values (mean) from the responses are transferred to the AHP model presented in order to get insight into the elements and interactions including the criteria and sub-criteria of TQM and business performances as the two main objectives. Having assumed that the actors including employees, customers and managers/IT professionals restrain the same influences, the importance of the product quality and service quality are the most important business elements with respect to the actors and the goal (IT business performance with TQM) as shown in Figure 4.

FIGURE 4 ACTORS AND BUSINESS PERFORMANCE CRITERIA

AND SUB-CRITERIA

Conclusions

Key TQM elements and key business performance elements have been identified through reviewing literature of knowledgeable gurus and scholars in the TQM and/or IT field. Accordingly, a TQM-IT framework was proposed to present the elements and their interrelations. In particular, the proposed framework emphasized the correlation enduring between customer focus and customer satisfaction through operating a data base CCIS to maintain the information of services and the customer’s views.

The flexibility of the proposed model could contribute to any IT service companies or management consulting firms in order to enhance quality in all aspects throughout the organization. Since there may be a temptation to overstate the findings, sufficient care should be taken to avoid overgeneralisation of the results. Although the proposed integrated methodology was generic in structure, the results were based on the values given by the actors and might be affected by their positions. Therefore, marginal generalisation rather than entire generalisation of the research results seemed to be meaningful as the survey was conducted in a specific period of time under investigation when limited staff members and/or customers were available or ready to contribute to the case study.

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it service improvement through total quality management

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