W5 – Basics of BPR(1)

Source / Reference:
1)  "Business process reengineering: A tutorial on the concept, evolution, method, technology and application” by Varun Grover and Manoj K.Malhotra 1996
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272696396001040

2)  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_process_reengineering

3)  http://dyag-0313.blogspot.com/2012/02/w4-strategic-alignment-model.html

Subject:
Lecture 5 – Key points in business process, the Myths, and Comment on http://dyag-0313.blogspot.com/2012/02/w4-strategic-alignment-model.html  ====================================================================

In Lecture five, it is mainly about Business Process Re-engineering (BPR). The first question that was asked by Helen today was why we need to have this process? At that moment, I did not have strong view on this question or even I do not know what BPR is actually. However, after Helen explaining on it in the lecture, my understanding towards BPR is become clearer.

The basics of BPR were introduced in lecture five. First of all, BPR can be divided into three components: Business, Process and Reengineering. Each of them has their own focus and description, but these are just hard information, so I am not going to talk about the details here.

Key points in business process

The key points in business process are rationale and the role of I.T. I am going to talk about the details here.

In Business process, rationale is one of the key points. The traditional organizations usually apply the top-down control, which means only the frontline staffs can reach the customers; however, this is not sufficient for nowadays market, so the horizontal view of organizations reflected by BPR is introduced. It emphasizes that both ends of the process have customers and de-emphasize the hierarchical structures. The horizontal view of organization can help organizations reduce confusion, increase accountability and performance of the process, and reduce wasteful activities, etc.

In terms of the role of I.T. IT contributes a lot to business process; for example, IT was used to automate and speed up processes in early year, and it enables a more effective creation and sharing of knowledge. In a BPR project, IT can also shape new possibilities for business process, not only assist it. Designing IT solution is a way to shape the new business process, since it can help find out the chance and hence to improve the process.

The Myths

After understanding the definition of BPR and the key points of the lecture, as there are already many success cases and story to glorify the importance and impact of BPR, now i would like to talk about the seven myths of BPR described by Grover & Malhotra (1997) are as follows:

Myth 1: “Reengineering is a radical one-time approach” is changing as many firms are not willing to invest the money and time to implement change from a “clean state”.

Myth 2: “Reengineering involves breakthrough performance gains” is being challenged as benchmarking and measurement of these gains can prove elusive.

Myth 3: “Reengineering enables change primarily through IT” is being moderated by the numerous organizational innovations involving people, jobs, skills and structures that facilitate process-oriented behaviors.

Myth 4: “Reengineering should focus on cross-functional core business processes” is fine, but many piecemeal improvements within functions can also add up to significant change and have proven very successful.

Myth 5: “Reengineering enhances individual capacities through empowerment and teams” is all well and good but many process-change projects are being defended based on cost objectives achieved through downsizing with few opportunities for retraining.

Myth 6: “Reengineering can use a standardized set of methods touted by armies of consultants” is being questioned given that no standardized approach exists to date.

Myth 7: “Reengineering must be conducted from the top down” is being challenged since often detailed understanding of process design resides with people who do the work.

After reading these myths, I think some of the myths are partially correct, it depends on the situation and current circumstances of the business. As there are many factors like economic situation and the size of business may lead to different result by using BPR, so it may be true to the small and medium enterprise but not the large companies.

Comment on http://dyag-0313.blogspot.com/2012/02/w4-strategic-alignment-model.html

In my opinion, there is no the best or the worst alignment perspective. Each alignment perspective has their own performance criteria which is adoptable to different scenarios, background and future roadmap of the firms.  Management even sometimes should shift across different alignment perspective in different stages in evolution or I.T generation changes. In addition, management would consider multiple perspectives when the performance criteria are involved multiple goals.

Management should understand the needs of internal and external domain and two strategies as the driver to make the right choices of strategic alignment. Besides, both strategies derive two alignments perspective. Management should conduct the due consideration to two alignments perspective to apply the best possible link between business strategy and IT infrastructure.

I agree with you that there many factors in an organization. Even the authors of the paper were asked the same question, and their response was the identical. Business models and information technology are both growing and changing each day. As a result, there is no universal model to simplify the business/IT/IS integration environment.

Also, I agree with you that it is good to study how to apply, utilize, and implement the strategic alignment model to further the business goals of a company using information systems, strategy, and infrastructure. And I think your finding about Summary of evaluation of strategic alignment for medium‐sized designer and builder enterprises are quite interesting.