What is business process re-engineering?
Business must constantly improve, and improvement
requires change. How the change is to be brought in is the
question, and not whether to change. Again there is very
little choice.
Cutting costs by cutting budgets and trying
to reduce work force has been attempted. Introducing quality
programmes to existing business processes has also been
tried. These methods have failed to provide more than very
short-term solutions. The new approach is RE-ENGINEERING.
You look at the current business as if the business is being
started afresh. REVIEW the past AND RELOOK into the present
REPOSITION for the future. Everything is RE. This entire
new approach is now known as Business Process Reengineering
(BPR)
What does BPR do?
REASSESSES – your business purpose
REPOSITION -- for greater market penetration
RECONFIGURE – for smoother workflow
RESTRUCTURE – so that jobs match reality
REVITALISE – for ongoing competitiveness
Like all new activities, it has been given
wide variety of names, including streamlining, transformation,
and restructuring. However, regardless of the name, the
goal is almost, always the same: increased ability to compete
through cost reduction. The recent surge of BPR efforts
is not based on invention of new management techniques.
Industrial engineering, time and motion studies, managerial
economics, operations research and systems analysis have
all been concerned with business process for several decades.
The new emphasis is due almost entirely to the recent recognition
of an increasing need to compete in order for a business
to succeed or even survive. The most visible result of these
changes is the decline of long established businesses. Some
actually have failed completely, and it is probable that
more will do so. Examples come to mind are General Motors
and IBM. The pressure to change is real. It is recognised,
and it is taken seriously.
The term “re-engineering” may be
a misnomer. It implies that the business processes were
engineered in the first place. However most business processes
are products of complex series of deliberate decisions and
informal evolution. They are not engineered in the sense
of a design being created by professionals and the process
being built to the designers specifications.
THE BASIS OF SUCCESSFUL REENGINEERING
It has been found that seven capabilities
must be part of re-engineering to make it succeed.
1. The ability to conduct re-engineering in
accordance with a comprehensive, systematic methodology
2. Coordinated management of change for all
the affected business functions
3. The ability to assess, plan and implement
change on a continuing basis
4. The ability to analyse the full impact
of proposed changes
5. The ability to model and stimulate the
proposed changes
6. The ability to use these models on continuing
basis
7. The ability to associate all of the management
parameters of the company with each other
Without all seven of these capabilities, re-engineering
becomes difficult to manage and unpredictable, as well as
being restricted to delivering only a small fraction of
its potential benefits.
Both positioning and re-engineering are flexible
enough to be used for either an entire enterprise or part
of one. There is no upper limit on the size of business
to which BPR can be applied. Re-engineering requires expertise
in HR, industrial engineering and economic marketing, finance,
technologies and of course, the specific work being performed.
Further Reading: “Re-engineering your
business” by Daniel Morris/Joel Brandon
