Soft Systems Methodology in action: A case study at a purchasing department

Abstract

The aim of this essay has been to try out Soft Systems Methodology on financial reporting at Volvo Cars Corporation (VCC). VCC saw a possible opportunity to improve their reporting processes, and SSM was chosen to deal with this possible problematic situation. Action Research became the natural way of conducting the study since it is almost a mandatory way of conducting SSM. A delimitation was made due to limited resources and only a small part of the purchasing department was involved, namely electrical purchasing. The result of the study is the artifacts from the different SSM steps that points upon how the participants would like the reporting system to be as well as many issues with the current reporting process. These outputs from the method were regarded as successful by both practitioner and participants. In essence the method was considered to be effective on a case such as this.