Article ESAS: A case-based approach to business planning and monitoring Andreas J. Frangou, Yan Wan, Jiju Antony and Mike Kaye Management & Decision Support Unit, Portsmouth Business School, University of Portsmouth, Locksway Road, Portsmouth PO4 8JF, UK E-mail: frangouapbs.port.ac.uk, & wanppbs.port.ac.uk Abstract: Creating and sustaining a competitive advantage in today’s turbulent world markets is a formidable business challenge. For many organisations, operating within an inherently unstable external environment has resulted in the need for a cultural rethink. Business complacency, brought about by corporate industry monopolisation, the reliance on reputation, brand identity, and customer allegiance, is no longer a recipe for sustained market growth. Companies have realised that being market focused could provide them with a competitive edge within the marketplace. To achieve this organisations have turned to the ‘Quality movement’, embracing the Total Quality Management (TQM) philosophy and its inherent tools (auditing frameworks, concept of quality systems etc.) as a means to recapture lost ground. ESAS (Enterprise Strategic Advisory System) is a prototype intelligent system that utilises a case-based approach to address the issues raised above, by providing organisations with advice on market-led quality and competitive strategy. This paper explores the philosophy and ideas behind the ESAS concept, and describes the development of an ESAS prototype. Keywords: Case-based reasoning, Total Quality Management, competitive strategy, generic quality framework, intelligent system. 182 Expert Systems, August 1998, Vol. 15, No. 3 1. Introduction There is within the business world a wealth of experience and knowledge that relates to quality and enterprise per- formance. Over the past decade this knowledge has been translated and encapsulated into the Total Quality Manage- ment (TQM) philosophy. TQM together with current self- assessment frameworks such as BS5750 (BSI, 1987), Euro- pean Quality Framework-EQF (EFQM, 1992) and Bald- rige-BNQA (NIST, 1990), have enabled organisations to plan a route to improve performance, with some degree of success (Johnson, 1993; Davis, 1992). However, research still indicates an 80% failure rate in such quality initiatives (Cottrell, 1992). Experts within the TQM fraternity suggest many reasons for these failures. They include; lack of ‘top management commitment’ (Hall, 1994), implementation of changes that are only internally focused (Foster & Beardon, 1993) and ‘continuous improvement’ which did not per- meate the strategic process (Gallaher, 1991). These failures seem to indicate a lack of focus and effec- tive enterprise guidance in targeting areas for change, dur- ing quality improvement programmes. It is important for organisations to establish the reasons behind, and expec- tations of any quality improvement programme, before investing their time, money and effort. Current auditing frameworks provide some guidance to organisations during such programmes, but emphasis is usually placed on internal matters. As enterprises operate within a market environment, the drive of any quality initiative must con- sider the forces within that environment; e.g. competition and customer requirements. As tools for facilitating enterprise competitiveness, current quality frameworks place little (BNQA- 9% weighting, EQF- 8% weighting) or no (BS 5750) emphasis on strategy (Ovretveit, 1993). It is this lack of competitive foresight which is the focus of this research. ESAS (Enterprise Strategic Advisory System) attempts to address these limitations by providing useful guidance on organisational change that can help cre- ate an advantage. The system is based around a conceptual Generic Quality Framework (GQF) that embodies the core values of the TQM philosophy (Oakland, 1993), but also incorporates the concepts of competitive strategy (Porter, 1980). It functions as a theoretical tool that outlines the type and nature of expertise required for the system’s case- base, by defining a set of conjectural enterprise tasks 1 , which would support a continuous improvement process. 1 Examples of enterprise tasks are; market environmental analy- sis, enterprise strategic programming and enterprise capability assessment.