Probably, your company is making great progress. You’re meeting goals easily, but the way you meet goals is where the problem is. Business processes play an important role in driving goals, but they are not as efficient as you’d like them to be, however, business process reengineering is a crucial element in the agenda of many large as well as small companies in many industries, with manufacturing and banking/ finance being the leading sectors. It allows organizations to view their business processes from a fresh perspective in order to understand how to redesign them to improve the way they work. You aim to simplify the concept of business process reengineering by explaining what it is and the process steps. You have also provided business process templates that you can use right away to kick start your own BPR project, while Making changes to the process gets more and more difficult as your business grows because of habits and investments in old methods. But in reality, you cannot improve processes without making changes. Processes have to be reengineered carefully since experiments and mistakes bring in a lot of confusion.

1. Principles of Business Process Reengineering
   • Work should be designed such that it is result-oriented and not process-oriented
   • Involve those people in the process who face the output
   • Merging data collection and processing units
   • Shared databases to interconnect dispersed departments
   • Bridging the processes which are running on similar lines
   • Decision making should also be a part of the work performed
   • Capture data at its point of origins
2. How to implement business process re-engineering in your business
3. Benefits of having a pre-decided BPR in place
   • Total customer satisfaction
   • Cost Advantage
   • Competitive Advantage
   • Creates value for customers
   • Clear Business Vision

Steps in Business Process Engineering Process:

Step 1. Determine the reason for the required change:

Step 2. Create a team of experts:

Step 3. Establish an understanding of the current process:

Step 4. Determine the inefficient processes and define necessary Key Performing Indicators (KPI):

Step 5. Develop a new process:

Step 6. Implement the new process:

Step 7. Evaluate the process and compare Key Performing Indicators (KPI):

Importance of Business Process Engineering

1) Introduction of new technology:

2) Reduced Respond time:

3) Competitive edge over your competitors:

4) Improved Productivity:

5) Improved Quality of products:

How to Develop As-Is and To-Be Business Process Reengineering?

Business models are developed as defining either the current state of the process, in which case the final product is called the “as is” snapshot model, or a concept of what the process should become, resulting in a “to be” model. By studying the difference between the current and target business state, known as a gap, the business analysts can determine if the existing business processes and information systems are sound and only need minor modifications, or if reengineering is required to correct problems or improve efficiency. Consequently, business process modeling and subsequent analysis can be used to fundamentally reshape the way an enterprise conducts its operations.

As-is Process

The As-Is process defines the current state of a business process in any given organization or structure. Generally speaking, the goal of analyzing the current state of a process is to find out which components could be improved. It is important to bear in mind that this As-Is analysis will only show you what can be improved, but not necessarily how. Mapping the As-Is process will only reveal how your business processes are working today.

To-be Process

Typically, a To-Be process is defined as the desired (or target) state of an organizational or business process. It is the ideal state of how you want your business processes to work, and mapping the To-Be processes will structurally clarify how you can get there. Thus, you will be able to see what changes are necessary for your business processes to reach their desired state.

History of Business Process Reengineering

In the early 1990’s, Michael Hammer (a professor of computer science in Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Management) and James Champy published a book, “Reengineering the Corporation”, that stated that in some cases, radical redesign and reorganization within a company were the only way to reduce costs and improve service quality. To this end, they said, information technology was the key element for allowing this to happen.

Hammer and Champy said that most large companies made (now invalid) assumptions about their goals, people and technology that were impacting the workflow. They suggested seven principles that could be used to reengineer and help streamline workflows, thus improving quality, time management and cost.

Hammer and Champy suggested the following seven principles in their book.

1. Organize around outcomes, not tasks.
2. Identify all the processes in an organization and prioritize them in orderof redesign urgency.
3. Integrate information processing work into the real work that produces the information.
4. Treat geographically dispersed resources as though they were centralized.
5. Link parallel activities in the workflow instead of just integrating their results.
6. Put the decision point where the work is performed, and build control into the process.
7. Capture information once and at the source.

To make the process most efficient, the power to make decisions regarding it should be given to the people performing the process and any unnecessary control systems should be eliminated. Instead of having extra processes to record information relating to the process, a resource within the process should provide all necessary data to increase accuracy and reduce redundancy.

HOW TO IMPLEMENT BUSINESS PROCESS REENGINEERING IN YOUR BUSINESS

1. BUSINESS VISION AND OBJECTIVES
2. IDENTIFICATION AND SLACKING PROCESSES
3. UNDERSTAND AND MEASURE THE ‘RED’ PROCESSES
4. INFORMATION SYSTEM AND TECHNOLOGY CAPABILITIE

A BPR program can be successful if:

• Customer needs are made the priority and this vision is used to appropriately direct business practices.
• There are cost advantages to be achieved that help the organization become more competitive in its industry
• A strategic view of all operational processes is taken with relevant questions being asked about the established way of work and how it can be developed over the long term into more efficient business practices
• There is a willingness to look beyond tasks and traditional functional boundaries with focus outcomes. Through this, entire processes can be eliminated or amalgamated into fewer but more relevant and powerful processes throughout the organization.
• There is a real desire to simplify the way of work by objectively assessing all activities and tasks and eliminating any that add less value and more complexity.

A BPR program will fail if:

• It is seen as a way to make minor adjustments and improvements to existing processes. If there is no clear willingness to put all existing process onto the chopping block, there is no chance of success
• It is seen as a one-time cost cutting exercise. In reality, cost reductions are often a handy by product of the activity but not the primary concern. It is also not a one-time activity but an ongoing change in mindset
• There is no success in gaining dedicated long term commitment from management and the employees. Bringing people onboard is a difficult task and many BPR initiatives never take off because enough effort is not put into securing support
• There is less effort to redesign and more to automate
• One department is prioritized at the expense of the process. There needs to be an openness towards studying every single process in detail and a willingness to change whatever is needed to achieve overall efficiency

There is too much internal focus and not enough of an eye on the industry and what competitor best practices can be used as benchmarks