Business Process Reengineering Challenges: Implications for Change Management - Term Paper Example

They adopt the use of such business practices that are focused on meeting the needs of the customers. For example, they bring reduction in the organizational layers and eliminate those business processes that are useless for the company. They do this by improving decision making and data dissemination, as well as by redesigning the functional organizations and forming cross-functional teams (BCG 2013). Companies can implement BPR by focusing on customer needs, redesigning core business processes, using information technology for bringing improvements, rethinking business issues, and forming cross-functional teams.

In this paper, we will discuss the way change management can be applied to business process reengineering by analyzing literature on change management and business process reengineering to develop a cogent argument. 2. Implications for Change Management As Richards (n.d., p. 1) states, “change is important for any organization because, without change, businesses would likely lose their competitive edge and fail to meet the needs”. Managers can manage their businesses properly by monitoring continuously the working of all business processes.

An understanding of BPR is essential for the managers in order to deal with the problems related to organizational effectiveness. Certain changes are inevitable for a company due to the influence of various internal and external forces that affect organizational policies and management functions. As Rasing (2010, p. 1) states, “the key to organizational change and development lies in the understanding of people's requirements and work towards it”. Change management is a critical process that involves redesigning of the roles, structure, and culture of a company.

Change is essential in a company for bringing improvement in the overall productivity of the company. Organizational change and business process reengineering both work for the cause of improving organizational efficiency. The need for organizational change arises when the performance of the core business processes does not come up to the expectations and cause decrease in organizational productivity. Managers implement the process of business process reengineering by considering the influence of external and internal forces of change.

Two of the main external forces of change that influence the working of business processes include competitive environment and technological development (Dunphy, Griffiths & Benn 2003). Competitive environment builds the need of delivering quality to customers in order to increase the customer base, whereas technological development refers to the use of technology to improve the efficiency of business processes so that the company remains competitive in the market. On the other hand, internal forces of change influence the working of employees and internal business policies.

Some of the main changes that occur due to such factors include changes in work environment, employment rules and regulations, and employee retention strategies. 3. Business Process Reengineering from Employers’ and Employees’ Perspectives As Paton and McCalman (2008, p. 381) state, “Most successful change processes accomplish their objectives through the project team”