W6- Basics of BPR (2)

References:

1.       “Business Process Management Journal” http://www.emeraldinsight.com/journals.htm?issn=1463-7154&volume=6&issue=1&PHPSESSID=0epveejk8gkaseebugqbcdch14

2.       “Business Process Reengineering: Its Past, Present, and Future” by J. Adebayo

http://conference.iproms.org/conference/download/4153/84

3.       http://www.ims-productivity.com/page.cfm/content/Business-Process-Re-Engineering-BPR/

4.       http://www.towersassociates.com/Towers_Associates_Process_Excellence_Evolution.html

5.       http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAxtDFSEyjk&feature=related

6.       http://www.emsstrategies.com/dm090203article2.html

Response:

With an objective of overall improvement of business processes, design mindsets of Business Process Reengineering (BPR), organization adaption, evolution of BPR and BPM concepts are vital to understand when implementing a BPR project. Process improvement can be a catalysis business success. There are lots of benefits of process improvement which can be illustrated by the following video.

In BPR, the role of IT plays as a basis of business process. IT is the core value to support and enable business process so as to reach the business strategy. However, the success in business strategy requires the alignment of business process and IT. For instance, if a company aims at technology leadership to improve customer satisfaction, business processes should be redesigned and modeled to be effective and efficient with the support of IT. From fundamental support to functional development, IT offers, for example, automation of process, capturing of physical information, sharing of knowledge and creation of solution that are established at different stage of BPR project.

It is clearly seen that IT can provide with a series of functionality. Meanwhile, in order to successfully implement the BPR project, the organization environment consisting of Information Technology use, Business Processes, Organizational form and Requisite People skills should be adjusted accordingly to retain functional harmony. Once there are any changes in these variables, the other should change as well to match the new trend. The Leavitt diamond model is introduced for long. The key point is to keep the well balance of these four elements to improve the organization performance when introducing IT enabled- organization transformation.

From lesson, we learnt about the waves of Business Process Improvement which can be shown as follows. Total Quality Management (TQM) is a continual improvement focusing on customer satisfaction towards products and service. Normally TQM means the evolution change that provide with incremental improvement to the business process. TQM may not be IT based. Meanwhile, 1^st wave BPR is talking about a IT-based radical change and quantum improvement that leads to a revolution. After 1^st ware of TQM and BPR, 2^nd ware of TQM and BPR continues to process improvement such as Time-based competition, Web-enabled e-business and knowledge management. It is also suggested to integrate BPR with TQM together as a modern practice.

There is further information about business process improvement suggested by Business Process Management Journal. As the contemporary business environment becomes increasingly dynamic, BPR is a must as a result of improving the existing business process. However, there is a main reason for BPR failure that the soft side of BPR such as people resists to the change. Therefore, Group Support System is recommended when implementing BPR. Group Support System (GSS) can be used to communicate, cooperate, coordinate, solve problems, compete, or negotiate. To match with changing environment, GSS can maximize the people involvement, minimize the technology interface and make better coordination so as to reach the next step of knowledge management.

The waves of Business Process evolution which is suggested in another way includes Total Quality Management, Business Process Improvement, Six Sigma, Lean Based Approaches, Business Process Management and Customer Expectation Management. TQM is same as mentioned before. After TQM and BPR, there are measurement processes of Six Sigma or ISO to manage the process variations that may cause to defects. Manufacturing and business processes can be measure, analyzed, improved, and controlled. As a result, it leads to business success. After that, there is Lean based approaches which are generic process management that requires less human effort, less manufacturing space, less investment in tools, and less engineering time to develop a new product. An example of Toyota can be shown that Toyota Production System introduced this management practice to focus on reduction of the original Toyota 'seven wastes' in order to improve overall customer value. ‘Seven Wastes’ are overproduction, waiting, transporting, inappropriate processing, unnecessary inventory, excess motion and defects. Now Toyota steadily grew to the most valuable and the biggest car company in the world.

Business Process Management is also important to business process improvement. It is about a management technique and tool to design, enact, control, and analyze operational business processes involving humans, organizations, applications, documents and other sources of information. BPM differs from BPR as it is not one-off revolutionary change to business process but continuous evolution.

Now, Customer Expectation Management (CEM) is an emergent approach of defining business, not in terms of the goods and services provide, but in terms of ‘customer expectations’. CEM realizes everything align with customer expectation. And it helps reductions in cost, improvements in revenue and enhanced customer service. As a result, it leads to customer satisfaction on business performance.

Additionally, J. Adebayo suggests that present BPR focus on the full picture of organization and re-optimise the business processes for overall goals and objectives. Therefore, IT solution like Enterprise Resource Planning, Customer Relationship Management and Supply Chain Management rapidly increase. They all include customer and cross-organizational boundary process. Besides TQM and BPR suggested as above, benchmarking and change management also need to be concerned in order to reach success in business process improvement.

Although some organizations may think changes must improve business performance. However, a change doesn’t mean a must to implement BPR/ BPM. There are some situations that business can consider to achieve BPR such as level and aspect of improvement, organization position, procession of resources, innovative vision of project leader, risk affordance and plenty of payback. To conclude, the approaches should depend on the nature of different industry and corporate strategy. IT innovations/ IT investment is not a must to business improvement. Attention to customers’ needs so as to attain long-term competitive advantages is preferable.