Business Process Re-engineering - a brief note

Students in Information Systems very often choose the topic area of Business Process Re-engineering (BPR) in their dissertation work. There are numerous books and journals related to BPR; you need to be aware of the classical works as well as more contemporary publications on BPR. You could use BPR as a theoretical perspective to evaluate information systems (IS) project or use BPR as the methodology to guide an (IS) project. I provide some references here. You need to do Internet search as well library (and e-library) search in order to do a proper literature review. A major refereed journal is Business Process Management published by Emerald.


Based on Day "A Framework for Business Process Reengineering": the three main components of BPR are:

1. BPR principles
2. BPR process
3. BPR methods and tools

Some tips on BPR practices can be grouped into two categories:

1. Strategic management: e.g.:
• Targeting of dramatic improvements as well as relentlessly pursuing ongoing incremental change
• Quick completion of projects, while acknowledging the need to go slow at times, in order to go faster in the long term
2. Process design, implementation and outcomes: e.g.:
• Best people chosen for design teams, with sufficient time away from everyday responsibilities to think creatively about improving processes.
• Strong customer orientation
• Encouragement of multi-skilled team work

References

1. Attaran,  M. (2004) "Exploring the relationship between information technology and business process reengineering", Information & Management, 41, pp. 585-596.
2. Coulson-Thomas, C. (editor) Business Process Re-engineering, Kogan Page.
3. Day, M. "A Framework for Business Process Reengineering" A working paper from the Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply, UK.
4. El Sawy, O.A. (2001) Redesigning Enterprise Processes for e-Business, McGraw-Hill.

Basic notes:
BPR: the fundamental rethinking and redesign of business processes to achieve dramatic improvements in critical, contemporary measures of performance, such as cost, quality, service, and speed.

Critical areas in BPR
* Process-based: an obsessive commitment to add value for customers; to look at the business from the outside in; concentrateon the end-to-end management of the processes which serve those customers.
* Fundamental rethink: adopt a zero-based approach to the redesign of key processes
* Radical improvement: to achievee dramatic leaps in performance.
* Integrated change: to deliver a balanced and holistic solution for which the relevant systems, people and training have been put in place.


Examples of IT capabilities:
* Geographical: IT can transfer information with rapidity and ease across large distances
* Informational: IT can bring vast amounts of detailed information into a process
* Analytical: IT can bring complex analytical methods to bear on a process
* Sequential: IT can enable changes in the sequence of tasks in a process, often allowing multiple tasks to be worked on simultaneously.