Track: Operations Management

Abstract

Business processes are closely associated with improvements in increased productivity and profitability. Keeping the “content” the same but changing the strategy has often been the approach of many service industries towards strategy implementation. However, non-compliance of employees to an organization’s business process towards implementation of a strategy has its associated risks. This study, therefore, investigates some of the associated risks in non-compliance to business process in a typical banking system in South Africa using primary and secondary data sources. This study used qualitative approach through the administration of questionnaires to 100 employees across all relevant segment in the selected commercial bank. These questionnaires were aimed at investigating alignment of business processes to the strategy to be implemented, staff adherence to business processes within their unit, evaluation of business processes in a business unit in the typical bank and evaluation of business process role on individual jobs. Data obtained from secondary sources like criminal investigations, financial loss data, audit data and process maturity dashboards were analysed. The study reveals that business processes are fundamental to any strategy. It is evident that not complying with the laid down business processes result in financial loss, which was as high as R29 million for process breaches and reputational risk for the case study used. Processes that are not documented make it difficult for risk managers to proactively identifying risks and controls. The study concludes with several recommendations on the business process towards risk minimization and profit maximization in an active competition between banking industries.