The Rental Cars-R-Us Case Study

RENTAL CARS-R-US
• Rental Cars-R-Us is a small car company, established initially in
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
• In the past 2 years, it has been acquiring other car companies in
Western Canada and the United States and growing larger
• The company has a car rental process and is happy with the overall
result
• Rental Cars-R-Us rents cars to its customers.
• Customers may be individuals or companies.
Issue
• Senior management is largely focused on acquisitions, franchising,
and finance, but….
• Chief operating officer (COO) is concerned with the fact that quality
and consistency have decreased as the organization has grown
Notes
• The creation of new processes or the transformation of an existing
process into some radically new process is not what is being asked for
here
• The company has a car rental process and is happy with the overall
result
• What it wants, instead, is for the process to be more consistent and to
be smoother
• So, rather than beginning with a goal of completely changing the
process, we begin with the goal of making an existing process
smoother and more efficient
Overview
• Rental Cars-R-Us rents cars to its customers. Customers may be
individuals or companies.
• Different models of cars are offered, organized into groups.
• All cars in a group are charged at the same rates.
• A car may be rented by a booking made in advance or by a “walk-in”
customer who simply shows up and wants to rent a car.
• A rental booking specifies the car group required, the start and end
dates/times of the rental, and the rental branch from which the
rental is to start.
• Optionally, the reservation may specify a oneway rental (in which the
car is returned to a branch different from the pickup branch) and may
request a specific car model within the required group.
Overview
PHASE 1: UNDERSTAND THE PROJECT
• Team of seven people, including business analysts, a human resources
performance specialist, and an information technology (IT) developer, has
• At this point, the team are trying to establish what they will attempt on their
first project (first met)
• Trying to come up with an initial description of the scope of the problem is a
bit nasty because the organization has layers and manages different
processes at different organizations been assemble
• At the same time, it is a nice illustration of the power-of-process approach
shows a simple architecture of the core, management, and support
processes that the worked out when they met for the second time
Basic management organization
1. Quick Overview
2. Basic Level 1 process
3. Create a Stakeholder Diagram
4. Develop a Scope Diagram
• Initial Scope Diagram describing the Rent Car Process
• Team interview
• A cause-effect diagram designed to explore incomplete and
inaccurate reservations in more detail
• Show where problems occur, to indicate the severity of the problems,
and to show what external processes might need to be examined
during the analysis phase to ensure a comprehensive analysis of the
major problems
• Problem Analysis
Team interview – Several Problems
• Policies are unclear or confusing and, thus, clerks taking reservations
on the telephone often make mistakes in completing the reservation
screens
• Problems also occur in car setups. Occasionally, customers arrive to
find that their car is not set up right, i.e GPs is not available, won’t
work, the general maintenance of the cars is not as good as it could
be—a paper cup may be found in the back seat area, or the gas tank
may not be full—which also leads to customer complaints
• Reservations were often incomplete or inaccurate was a major
problem
PHASE 2: ANALYZE THE BUSINESS PROCESS
• the team gathers data to really understand why the problems
identified by the Scope Diagram existed, and to define how seriously
the problems really are
• looking at how the process interacts with its environment, and begins
to explore why the process functions as it does
• Shift from asking what the process is doing to asking why it is doing
what it is doing
• shift from a Scope Diagram to a Process Flow - to a Business Process
Model and Notation (BPMN) diagram
PHASE 3: REDESIGNING THE RENTAL PROCESS
• A specific activity is being performed that could be eliminated and save
time.
• If the problem is simple, then redesign is usually focused on
accomplishing a specific task
• Team decided to focus on three problems:
• (1) The problem customers and the organization had getting the reservation
agreement right.
• (2) The problem the organization had getting new cars prepared as requested.
• (3) The problem that resulted from managers not being on top of what was
happening and responding quickly enough
SOLUTION:
• Revising the Rental Agreement to make it easier and less ambiguous.
• Revising the paper application, but, at the same time, creating a website
where customers could create their own reservation, and making the same
online reservation system available as an app for smart phones and digital
assistants.
• Carefully training all Reservations Clerks in the new agreement and
associated policies.
• Retraining Depot personnel in preparation of cars.
• Developing a Preparation Quality Checklist and requiring managers to check
each car before placing it in a stall.
• Developing a BPM software application to provide HQ and Franchise
Managers with more up-to-date information on what is happening at each
franchise.
ACTION :
• The team defined what the new To-Be process would look like, sold the
concept to management and the people who performed the existing
Rent Cars process, and
• Defined the new training and IT resources that they would need to
implement the new process.
• At this point, the team project manager began to collaborate with
teams from Human Resources and IT as they undertook the actual
development of new resources.
• When called on, the team worked with the various groups to define
and test the new materials.
NEXT…. (excluded)
• PHASE 4: IMPLEMENT THE REDESIGNED BUSINESS PROCESS
• PHASE 5: ROLL OUT THE NEW RENTAL PROCESS