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Chapter 11 Managing Knowledge 469

INTERACTIVE SESSION: ORGANIZATIONS

ALBASSAMI’S JOB IS NOT FEASIBLE WITHOUT IT

If you live in a country with a diverse geography and There is replication between the server at head-
a climate characterized as being harsh, with a dry des- quarters and the client’s branches. Throughout the
ert and great temperature extremes like the Kingdom replication, branches’ data is sent to the server and
of Saudi Arabia (area: 2.1 million square kilometers), aggregated to create the most updated database ver-
and you need to move from one city to another, sion, and then sent back to the branches. This means
where the distance could be some thousand kilome- every branch has the most recent version of the client
ters, you have two choices: to drive, or to fly and ship list, trucks’ availability, and new shipping contracts so
your car via a car transport carrier. Many people in that any customer is able to deal with any branch at
the Kingdom prefer the second option. This has cre- any time.
ated a market for car transportation in the Kingdom The business process starts when the customer
that is the largest in the Middle East. Albassami was goes to a branch to ship his car to a destination within
established to respond to these market needs. The shipping areas, and the branch then creates a shipping
Albassami International Group is considered one of agreement. As the database is sent from the branch
the leading land transporters in the Middle East. to HQ every 30 minutes, an aggregated version of the
The estimated size of the car transportation mar- database of all branches is available at HQ and there-
ket, both inside the Kingdom and with neighboring after sent back to all branches. The recipient branch
countries, is about 2 billion Saudi riyals and is increas- will create a receipt entry on the system upon arrival
ing considerably annually. There are more than a mil- of the truck and then an SMS message is created and
lion cars transported inside and outside the Kingdom. sent to the customer, who will then go to the destina-
Albassami International Group owns the largest fleet tion branch to receive the car.
of carriers in the Middle East. The shipping information system used at
At present, the group is operating all over Albassami maintains all the sender information such
the Kingdom and extends throughout the Gulf as the sent car, the truck number, the sender and
Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, Syria, Lebanon, receiving branches, and it also sends an SMS mes-
and Jordan. Throughout these years the company has sage to the client acknowledging the arrival of the car.
focused on how to maintain business leadership in The system also records the client’s data, and holds
order to achieve safe and fast transportation. maintenance information. Linking the data of vehicle
Every day there are more than 1,000 shipping con- maintenance centers with the transportation service
tracts, including 2,000 to 2,500 bills of lading daily helps to enhance company performance and achieve
between the main branches. With the introduction of better customer service. The system also enables stan-
its new division of Express transportation in 2003, the dard reports to be provided to top management and
group owns and allocates 170 heavy duty, medium, head sectors about the productivity of each branch,
and light vehicles of various types for its door-to-door resulting in accurate identification of needs for differ-
courier services, which operate all over the Kingdom, ent regions and thus proper budget allocation. In addi-
covering more than 45 locations. It was therefore tion, the system allowed a better audit on all drivers’
impossible to properly handle and control the endless behavior by using the output of the vehicles’ tracking
number of daily work options and orders related to information. Proper performance monitoring resulted
these operations at a perfect level of service without a in adequate employees’ appraisals and consequently
robust computerized system. The system needed the loyal staff!
facility to serve specific sectors in the organization, All business processes are facilitated by the ship-
in addition to providing information throughout the ping system, and the knowledge extracted from the
group. central database has enabled the management team to
The system is based on clustered Dell servers make sound investment and operational decisions and
running Windows 2003 and connected to over 270 therefore helped the business maintain its success and
Windows XP clients. The database management sys- leadership in the Kingdom.
tem, used as the backbone of the system, is Sybase
Adaptive server, whereas clients use SQL Anywhere.

MIS_13_Ch_11 Global.indd 469 1/17/2013 2:30:06 PM