Kaiyu Nie 824140

Youjia Sun 857416

Yang Zhang 814003
Chengqi Sun 853329
Ting Chen 802512
Tingqian Yu 871977

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Group analysis report

824140, 857416, 814003, 853329, 802512, 871977
Organizational Processes
Kaiyu Nie, Youjia Sun, Yang Zhang, Chengqi Sun, Ting Chen, Tingqian Yu

Wally Smith
06.09.2017
 ISYS90081
Organizational Processes

GROUP ANALYSIS REPORT

SENSETIME
PRODUCT LIFE CYCLE PROCESS

GROUP MEMBERS

Chengqi Sun
Kariyu Nie
Ting Chen
Tingqian Yu
Yang Zhang
Youjia Sun
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 Contents

1. Introduction ............................................................................................................... 3
2. Process overview ..................................................................................................... 3
3. Challenges and opportunities ................................................................................... 4
3.1 Challenges ...................................................................................................... 4
3.2. Opportunities .................................................................................................. 5
4. Conclusion ................................................................................................................ 6
5. Context diagram ....................................................................................................... 7
6. Physical Level 0 Data Flow Diagram ........................................................................ 8
7. Logical level 0 Data Flow Diagram ........................................................................... 9
8. Logical level 1 Data Flow Diagram for design process ........................................... 10
9. BPMN workflow diagram ........................................................................................ 11
Reference: .................................................................................................................. 12

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1. Introduction

Sensetime is a Chinese innovative IT company which concentrates on developing

image recognition technologies and relevant products.

Based on the strategy to be the pioneer of Artificial Intelligence (AI) industry, the
company aims to design hi-tech AI applications with creative originality. The core
competency of Sensetime relies on its ability to leverage Deep Learning
technology, highly-trained experts and patents built to develop cutting-edge
products, with an emphasis on continuous organizational learning. Moreover, with
a brand reputation of excellent professional competence, the company
successfully establishes long-term partnerships with leading companies in diverse
industries including surveillance, finance, education and robotics (AI business,
2016).

2. Process overview

Sensetime follows a product lifecycle process to satisfy customer demands.

Market department delivers a market research report to Engineering department

whilst R&D providing technical support. A product specification is then generated
by Engineering, which will be sent to the Manufacturer to make a sample product.

When the sample product is received by the Sales department, target client can
be extracted from client information database with product information sent to
them. Once a contract is signed, the orders are delivered to Manufacturer through
Liaison department and the end products are sent to clients directly. Finally, after-
sales department is responsible for any feedbacks from clients.

This process can be considered mainly as an unstructured process, because it is

quite hard to define some work in advance. Specifically, human judgement is
heavily required for decision making, innovation and communication with external
agents, and thus the overall process is non-automatable.

Two information systems are specifically built to support the process. A deep
learning system is used for organizational knowledge management which
captures, stores and shares the knowledge gained by Sensetime. Data will be
grabbed for use from the system and new data will be added to it, which forms an
iterative pattern. Additionally, the client information system allows Sensetime to

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manage relationships in a holistic way and orient more accurately by matching
clients’ information with products’.

3. Challenges and opportunities

3.1 Challenges
The fast-growing industry environment poses both opportunities and challenges to
this process for Sensetime.

● Keeping costs down

Sound cost management and a healthy cash flow is of fundamental importance for
startups like Sensetime. However, issues have been identified that may
unnecessarily drive up the process costs. The liaison department plays the role of
a conduit between sales and manufacturers when new contracts are signed. This
department, however, only transfers orders consolidated from sales to
manufacturers without adding any value to this process, which can be concluded
as a motion waste according to Lean management (Bhasin, S 2015). This
superfluous department is likely to cause wear and tear of human resources and
possible information errors.

● Business-IT alignment
Currently, feedbacks and claims are reported to after-sales department and these
reviews are not sent back to the engineering and R&D departments. This lack of
information feedback represents a business-IT misalignment as IT people and
business people do work on their own and knowledge sharing is almost non-
existent here. Software development and product engineering are overarching in
Sensetime and given the dynamic nature of AI industry, lack of communication will
prevent products from being more user-friendly and adapted to clients’ changing
requirements, which may result in the loss of cooperation opportunities with clients
in the future.

● Maintaining quality
Sensetime is committed to delivering quality customer products to their clients.
However, from the diagrams, there is no evidence of quality control throughout the
product lifecycle process. When the sales department receives the sample
product, it is not checked against product specifications and no testing or rollout is
performed to verify the quality of the sample product. Also, the end products are
directly delivered to the client by the manufacturer. This is unreasonable because
no inspections are conducted by Sensetime, which may result in undiscovered
product defection.

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● Competition
In line with the product lifecycle process, Sensetime is organized around different
functions such as R&D and sales to promote greater specialization (Fig.1). This
functional structure is suitable for Sensetime as it only has a single line of
business now. However, in a flourishing AI industry, Sensetime is faced with fierce
competition from time to time. To outperform competition, it was just a matter of
time for Sensetime to diversify its product ranges. At that time, this structure may
become a barrier as coordination will become impossible using one set of
functional departments and the process may not have the capacity to cope with a
variety of products either. Therefore, both the organizational structure and the
process itself may have to undergone tremendous changes.

Figure 1

● Increasing process robustness

A business process is robust if it can reduce volatility of output and ensure
consistent payback for the organization. For Sensetime, the reliability of the
process is hard to qualify as it heavily relies on the performance of an external
third party which is the manufacturer to produce products. If something goes
wrong in the manufacturer’s side and the end products cannot be delivered to the
client on time, the process will fail to achieve a desired outcome. As far as our
consultancy know, there is no formal procedures to handle a disruptive situation
like this. Therefore, Sensetime still need a more systematic approach to tackle
less idealized conditions or at least allow for small variances in their process.

3.2. Opportunities
The challenges discussed above represents opportunities for improvement in
order for further value to be gained from the process. For example, by lowering
process cost and improve quality control, Sensetime will be able to deliver
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premium products at affordable prices. Also, since customers are more mobile
than ever before, increasing process robustness will be more responsive to
changing customer requirements.

4. Conclusion

Directly relevant to the physical creation, sale and support of products, this core
business process is paramount for the sustainability of Sensetime. In all, an
improvement effort will be required to enhance the product lifecycle process in
Sensetime.

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5. Context diagram

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6. Physical Level 0 Data Flow Diagram

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7. Logical level 0 Data Flow Diagram

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8. Logical level 1 Data Flow Diagram for design process

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9. BPMN workflow diagram

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Reference:

AI Business. (2016). Beijing AI Start-up SenseTime Pioneering Deep Learning

Technology. [online] Available at: https://aibusiness.com/beijing-ai-start-up-
sensetime-pioneering-deep-learning-technology/ [Accessed 6 Sep. 2017].

Bhasin, S 2015, Lean Management Beyond Manufacturing: A Holistic Approach,

n.p.: Cham: Springer, 2015., UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE's Catalogue,
EBSCOhost

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