PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT AND CONTROL
A Case Study in Mercedes Benz Cyprus
A. I. Kokkinaki
Department of Management and MIS, University of Nicosia, 46 Makedonitissas Ave., 1700 Nicosia, Cyprus
A. Vouldis
Sales and Marketing Department, Cyprus Import Corporation Ltd, 49 Kampou Str, 2030 Strovolos, Cyprus
Keywords: Performance Management, Information Systems, Extended Products.
Abstract: This paper is a case study that outlines design and implementation issues related to an application that
facilitates process management and controls business performance issues in a retailer of extended products.
The notion of an extended product is that of a product bundled with services. Towards this aim, the case
study described in this paper focuses on three objectives: to review on existing theory on the subject of
designing and developing applications and interfaces for enterprise information systems, to solicit end-
users’ requirements based on which an information system is designed and developed.
1 INTRODUCTION
This paper is a case study that outlines design and
implementation issues related to an application that
facilitates process management and controls
business performance issues in an enterprise that
sells extended products. The notion of an extended
product is that of a product bundled with services.
Towards this aim, the case study described in this
paper focuses on three objectives: to review existing
theory on the subject of designing and developing
applications and interfaces in enterprises; to identify
the target users’ requirements for the design and
development of such applications; and to design and
develop a system for quality management. The
value of the research relates primarily to its
knowledge contribution to the wider field of
designing and developing applications and interfaces
for enterprises retailing extended products.
The research is based on both secondary and
primary data. Secondary data has been collected
through a literature review to create a solid
theoretical basis used for the design and the
development of interfaces for service-oriented
enterprises. Primary data have also been employed
from a focus group studying the information system
in the sales and marketing department of the
Mercedes – Benz Cyprus. A draft version of the
focus group framework was pilot-tested by 8
business representatives; minor problems were
identified and addressed in the final version. Each
framework appraises desired interface, relevance,
form and other technical elements related to the
described system. Findings from this case study
were used for the initial design and development of
the various subsystems of this application.
The remaining of this paper is structured as
follows. Section 2 presents a brief literature review
on information systems that monitor and control
performance issues in enterprises. Based on the
literature review, users’ requirements solicitation
was conducted and questions relevant to the design
and the development of the specific system were
formulated. Section 3 outlines the research findings
of the focus group discussion and presents the
design and development of the interface and the
quality management application, while section 4
concludes this paper.
321
I. Kokkinaki A. and Vouldis A. (2010).
PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT AND CONTROL - A Case Study in Mercedes Benz Cyprus.
In Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems - Information Systems Analysis and Specification, pages
321-325
Copyright
c
 SciTePress

2 IS FOR PERFORMANCE
MONITORING AND CONTROL
Enterprises offering extended products are enforced
to operate in a dynamic environment, more so today
than ever before. Therefore, agility in the support of
business processes and decision making is a major
requirement. At large, research examining the
adaptive and agile enterprise (Campbell 1998;
Davenport 1998; Goranson 1999; Haeckel 1999)
outlines the need for an architectural revolution that
impedes agility, so that business processes are
integrated, integrated outputs are composed and
better and faster management is facilitated.
Currently, two paradigms of Information Systems
support operational agility, namely dashboard
applications and systems that rely on Service
Oriented Architecture (SOA).
Figure 1: Dashboard Types (Adapted from Houghton et al.
(2004)).
Research on dashboard applications (Gray and
El Sawy, 2004; Houghton et al., 2004; Pankaj et al.,
2006; Nichols et al., 2009) examines how
operational requirements are aligned with the design
and development of such system. Depending on the
underlying technological infrastructure and the
specific organisational requirements four types of
dashboard applications may be distinguished, that is,
EIS Business Performance Dashboard, Operations
Control Dashboard, Business Process Dashboard
and Collaborative Dashboard. EIS business
performance dashboards are derived from
conventional executive support systems. Operations
control dashboards focus on the operational
performance of a specific group of users within an
organisation. Business process dashboards monitor
the performance of enterprise-wide transactions.
Collaborative dashboards are taking under
consideration the workflow requirements of
transactions and enable participatory actions in an
attempt to facilitate its execution. In (Nichols et al.,
2009), a theoretical foundation for dashboard
creation and implementation has been proposed to
formalize the role of dashboards in service oriented
organisations.
Figure 2: SOA Architecture.
Research on SOA has examined how cross-
organisational and inter-organisational business
processes may be twined to result into a Service
Oriented Enterprise (Brown and Carpenter 2004;
Goul Demirkan Nichols). In the SOA paradigm,
standardized invocation interfaces for components
are mapped to a spectrum of organisational
resources including human resources, ICT services,
infrastructure etc. Furthermore, the mapping of
resources to a specific service in itself is not
considered static anymore, because there may be
multiple resources capable of performing the
required service. Under this conceptualisation,
resources are no longer constrained to operate within
the boundaries of a static organisational structure but
are dynamically orchestrated to support the process
that invokes them (Demirkan Kauffman Vayghan
Fill Karagiannis and Maglio 2009).
In our paper, we contribute towards the
formation of a methodology for the design and
implementation of a quality management application
for retailers of extended products. The approach
followed is outlined in section 3.
3 CASE STUDY: MERCEDES
BENZ CYPRUS
Cyprus Import Corporation is the sole distributor of
Mercedes-Benz cars in the Republic of Cyprus.
Cyprus is a Eurasian island in the eastern
Process to Services
Mapping
SOA
SOI
Business
Process
Resource
Service
Business
Process
Business
Process
Business
Process
Business
Process
Service ServiceService Service
Resource Resource Resource Resource
ResourceResourceResourceResource
ICEIS 2010 - 12th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems
322

Mediterranean Sea. The Republic of Cyprus is a
member of the European Union since May 1
st
2004
and has adopted the Euro as its national currency
since January 2008. The population residing within
the geographical boundaries controlled by the
Republic of Cyprus amounts is estimated at 796,9
thousands at the end of 2008 according to the latest
official population census of 2008 (Cyprus Statistics
Department, 2009). According to the latest IMF
estimates, its per capita GDP (adjusted for
purchasing power) is, at $46,865, the third highest in
the European Union. The researchers come from the
School of Business at a private University and the
company under study and have experience in
designing and implementing enterprise information
systems. The main motivation for this research is the
alignment of academic interests with a concern
voiced by the business community over colloquial
fora; this need has also been formally verified
through the conducted focus group.
To identify users’ requirements for the proposed
search system, a group-focus discussion among
potential users from the sales & marketing of the
Mercedes – Benz Cyprus has been conducted in the
first trimester of 2009. First, a draft version of the
framework was pilot-tested among 8 representatives
of the hosted organization. Minor problems were
identified and addressed in the finalized version of
the framework. This study has focused on the design
aspects that facilitate and support monitoring and
control of performance issues in organizations.
Through the focus - group, four major clusters of
activities have been identified as major contributing
factors to improved performance in the service
sector. These include activities related to
management of personnel (often geographically
dispersed and working in different time intervals),
managing customers (help desk, services,
maintenance etc) perspective customers (consistent
and concise communication) and managing the
financial flows.
Based on feedback received, the Quality
Management System, a model for product and
service development support was proposed. Figure 4
outlines the model that includes performance
indicators that identify, measure, control, and
improve several core business processes throughout
the entire organization. It consists of several
integrated modules that address the identified
aspects of quality management. These modules are
interconnected and share a single data repository to
enable users have efficient and consistent data
access as well as data visibility across business
functional units.
Figure 3: Print screen of the Quality Management system
for the sales & marketing department in Mercedes-Benz
Cyprus.
Figure 4: A System for Performance Monitoring and
Control for Extended Products.
The system includes integrated modules that
include the following:
1. Home, where the user manages the
administrative tasks of the systems, including
changing Passwords, Login accounts, information
about the location of colleagues, pending tasks,
setting an appointment with a customer, setting a
reminder, making a call to a customer.
2. Calls Management, where the user keeps track
of different means of communication with customers
and their outcomes.
3. Personnel, where data that is relevant to
employees are kept, including personal data, salary
details, leaves, reference files, employee training,
bonuses etc.
5. Prospected Customers: this module manages
and keeps track of information related to the
prospected (future) customers of the organisation.
PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT AND CONTROL - A Case Study in Mercedes Benz Cyprus
323

6. Requests/Pending handles customer pending
requests and employee tasks within the organisation.
7. Maintenance manages and keeps track of all
processes supporting maintenance activities
requested by customers.
9. Services: the various types of services offered
to the customers; details are kept for the services
offered and the charges made.
10. The reporting tool concentrates data from
different resources within the company and with a
data mining procedure prepares a final new database
cube which gives the opportunity to show reports in
different dimensions. Before this tool was available,
about two working days were needed to prepare the
monthly reports but now after the implementation of
the Intelligence Reporting Analysis Tool it is
possible to complete all the reports in 30 seconds!
11. Debtor Collecting System manages the
pending financial issues monitoring information on
partial payments, arrangements set and progress
reports.
12. Communications monitors all different types
of communications initiated or ongoing with
customers and partners of the organisation.
13. Back Office, where configuration of
processes and interactions are described and
14. General Settings that include other useful
administrative details
The home module of the system is shown in
Figure 4 and a full demonstration of the system will
be provided during presentation.
4 CONCLUSIONS
This paper outlines design and implementation
issues of a system that supports performance issues
and controlling extended products, namely luxurious
cars a set of services that aim to improve customer
satisfaction. Towards this aim, three objectives were
fulfilled: to review existing theory on the subject of
designing and developing applications and interfaces
in enterprises; to identify the target users’
requirements for the design and development of such
applications; and to combine primary and secondary
research results towards design and development of
a quality management system. This research
contributes towards designing and developing
applications for performance management in
enterprises retailing extended products.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This research has been partially supported by
Mercedes – Benz Cyprus.
REFERENCES
Ashby, W., 1969. Self-Regulation and Requisite Variety.
In Systems Thinking, F. Emery (ed.), Penguin, 1969.
Beshears, F., 2005. Mintzberg's Taxonomy of
Organisational Forms (http://istsocrates.
berkeley.edu/~fmb/articles/mintzberg/).
Brown, G., and Carpenter, R., 2004. Successful
Application of Service-Oriented Architecture Across
the Enterprise and Beyond. In Intel Technology
Journal (8:4).
Campbell, A., 1998. The Agile Enterprise: Assessing the
Technology Management Issues. In International
Journal of Technology Management (15:1), p 82.
Davenport, T., 1998. Putting the Enterprise into the
Enterprise System, In Harvard Business Review.
Demirkan, H., and Goul, M., 2006. Towards the Service
Oriented Enterprise Vision: Bridging Industry and
Academics. In The Communications of the Association
for Information Systems (18:26), p 546.
Demirkan, H., Kauffman, R., Vayghan, J., Fill, H.,
Karagiannis, D., and Maglio, P., 2009. Service-
Oriented Technology and Management: Perspectives
on Research and Practice for the Coming Decade. In
The Electronic Commerce Research and Applications
Journal (7:4), p 356.
Demirkan, H., and Nichols, J., 2008. IT Services Project
Management: Lessons Learned from a Case Study in
Implementation. In International Journal of Project
Organisation and Management (1:2), p 204.
Erl, T., 2004. Service-Oriented Architecture: A Field
Guide to Integrating XML and Web Services. Prentice
Hall, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey.
Gittell, J., 2000, Paradox of Coordination and Control. In
California Management Review (42:3), p 101.
Goranson, H., 1999. The Agile Virtual Enterprise: Cases,
Metrics, Tools, Quorum Books.
Haeckel, S., 1999. Adaptive Enterprise: Creating and
Leading Sense-and-Respond Organisation. Harvard
Business School Press.
Houghton, R., El Sawy, O., Gray, P., Donegan, C., and
Joshi, A., 2004. Vigilant Information Systems For
Managing Enterprises In Dynamic Supply Chains:
Real-Time Dashboards At Western Digital. In MIS
Quarterly Executive (3:1), p 19.
Keen, P., 2004. Business Process Co-sourcing:
Imperative, Historically Inevitable, Ready to Go
(http://www.peterkeen.com/recent/articles/cosourci.ht
m).
Keith, M., Goul, M., Demirkan, H., Nichols, J., and
Mitchell, M., 2006. Contextualizing Knowledge
Management Readiness to Support Change
Management Strategies. In Proceedings of the 2006
ICEIS 2010 - 12th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems
324

Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences,
Manoa, Hawaii, 2006.
Koushik, M., 1995. Modeling Coordination in Software
Construction: An Analytical Approach. In Information
Systems Research (6:3), p 220.
Mintzberg, H., 1983. Structure in Fives: Designing
Effective Organisations. Prentice-Hall, Englewood
Cliffs, NY, 1983.
Mookerjee, V., and Chiang, R., 2002. A Dynamic
Coordination Policy for Software System
Construction. In IEEE Transactions on Software
Engineering (28:6), p 684.
Nassimbeni, G., 1998. Network Structures and Co-
ordination Mechanisms: A Taxonomy. In
International Journal of Operations and Production
Management (18:6), p 538.
Nichols, J., Dermikan, H., Goul, M., and Keith, M., 2009.
Towards a Theory of Agile Dashboards for Service
Oriented Organisations. In Proceedings of the
Fifteenth Americas Conference on Information
Systems, San Francisco, California. Available at
http://aisel.aisnet.org/amcis2009/683
Papazoglou, M., and Georgakopoulos, D., 2003. Service-
Oriented Computing. In Communications of the ACM
(36:10), p 25.
Terwiesch, C., and Loch, C., 1999. Measuring the
Effectiveness of Overlapping Development Activities.
In Management Science (45:4), p 445.
PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT AND CONTROL - A Case Study in Mercedes Benz Cyprus
325