Business Process Reengineering Dead or Going Strong - Essay Example

Business Process Reengineering – Dead Or Going Strong? Introduction Business process reengineering is a business strategy that became famous in the later part of 20th century. The focus of business process reengineering was on the flow of work within an organization. The aim of this business strategy was to enhance customer value and satisfaction by redesigning the business processes. Business process reengineering was a huge success in late 20th century because it was both relative simple and effective in changing the organizations. Business process reengineering also played a vital role in driving the cost down and making sure that efficiency is enhanced significantly. Some people doubt its effectiveness in the modern days, but this paper will discuss in detail why business process reengineering is still going strong. Business Process Reengineering In business process reengineering, all business processes are broken down to small steps and are then analyzed. The aim is to make business processes efficient in order to avoid wastage, improve efficiency, and enhance customer value. By analyzing workflows business process reengineering tries to make sure that every all business processes are aligned to the overall business goals and objective. The reason why business process reengineering became famous was that it was the first approach that took into account business processed and workflows. The focus of this management strategy is on redesigning exiting work processes and job design. Sometimes job processes are not interesting and therefore employees are not motivated to work hard. Many times workflow in the organization is not in line with the skills of the employees, and therefore employees feel detached from the organization. Sometimes employees with high level of skills are made to work on tasks that do not apply their expertise. All these problems are removed by business process reengineering as it redesigns workflow and business process in the organization to make sure that employees remain interested in the job and give their best to the firm. This is why business process reengineering became famous immediately after it introduced in the last decade of the 20th century. Business process reengineering has been proven to be effective, at least in part, in improving organizational performance (Altinkemer, et al. 1998). This is another reason why it became so popular as soon as it was introduced. Redesigning of workflow in organizations made executives understand about the complications in job designs. Disenchanted workers did not prove helpful for the firms because of the nature of jobs they were assigned. This realization played a great role in improving organizational performance through business process reengineering. Business process reengineering: Going dead or Still Strong There is no doubt that business process reengineering is not popular today as it was in the 1990s. But this does not mean that business process reengineering is a dead concept. The decrease in literature on business process reengineering indicates that it is maturing (Deakins & Makgill, 1997). This is why we cannot say that business process reengineering is going dead. Also there are a number of recent studies that have explored the concept of business process reengineering, and have applied it to many different industries. This is why it cannot be concluded that business process reengineering is going dead. Many people misunderstand the concept of business process reengineering and approach it passively. BPR is not something that can be implemented by outside experts, and top management has to be onboard for the change. The top management of an organization should also be ready and inclined to change their business process and overall approach. BPR is often misunderstood as a technology ‘thing’ and managers expect that BPR always comes with technology relate solutions. This is not the case because BPR involves revamping all the business processes of the organization. It can also be said that managers have approached BPR in a wrong way and has seen it as a way to solve problems without taking into account the need for social interaction and feedback. This is one of the reasons why BPR has not worked well in many organizations. But this does not mean that the overall concept is flawed. BPR has certainly created some problems in organizations but these are due to wrong implementation of the concept. There are definitely some issues related to the implementation of BPR, but the concept is still valid today. For example BPR does not focus on other areas of the organization, and focuses only on business processes and this is considered an obstacle for realization of the true potential of business process reengineering (Rao, et al. 2012). Similarly there are also some implementation issues when it comes to BPR and this is why BPR has failed to improve performance in many companies. Managers have approached BPR in a wrong way and this is why BPR has not shown its full potential. The relationship of BPR with information technology is examined regularly because information technology is an important component of business process reengineering. BPR is not all about information technology, but information technology plays a facilitation role in the implementation of successful business process reengineering. Application of information technology is vital in business process reengineering (Attaran, 2003). BPR involves using information technology concepts and capabilities in order to achieve benefits of business process reengineering, and this is another reason why it cannot be concluded that BPR is dead. Researchers stress the role of information technology in BPR which shows that the concept is still valid, and far from dead. Researchers have also tried to find how BPR concepts can be applied to public sector organizations and concluded that some of the concepts are transferrable to public sector as well (Weerakkody, et al. 2011). This again shows that business process reengineering is not a dead concept. The above mentioned study is a relatively recent study which has attempted to explore the BPR concepts can be transferred to public sector organizations. This strengthens the claim that business process reengineering is still strong. The application of business process reengineering in service oriented business is also now explored by researchers (see Singh, Gupta, & Singh, 2012). This shows that the concept of business process reengineering is being applied to different industries which again highlights that the concept is still going strong. Service oriented business can make use of BPR and in turn can improve customer value. The applications of BPR concepts in service industry tell that business process reengineering is still going strong. Business process reengineering is also being studied in relation with implementation of six sigma (Yang, 2011). This again shows the strength of business process reengineering as a management strategy. The applications of BPR are in many business areas, and therefore it cannot be concluded that business process reengineering is a dead concept. Conclusion Business process reengineering is still going strong because researchers are still exploring the concept and its application in different business areas and in different industries. There are some implementation issues and also some misunderstandings about the concept which has led some to believe that BPR is a dead concept. The reality is that the concept is still going strong, and researchers are still trying to understand how business process reengineering can be applied to different fields. The concepts of BPR are also valid to a certain extent in the public sector organization which again supports the claim that BPR is going strong. References Attaran, M. 2003. Exploring the relationship between information technology and business process reengineering, Information & Management, Vol. 41, pp. 585-596 Altinkemer, K., Chaturvedi, A., & Kondareddy, S. 1998. Business Process Reengineering and Organizational Performance: An exploration of issues, International Journal of Information Management, Vo.18, No.6, pp. 381-392 Deakins, E., & Makgill, H. 1997. What killed BPR? Some evidence from the literature, Business Process Management Journal, Vol. 3, No 1, pp.81 – 107 Singh, J., Gupta, A., & Singh, J. 2012. Service Oriented Business Process Reengineering. International Journal of Advanced Research in Computer Science and Software Engineering. Vol. 2, No. 7, pp. 241-243 Rao, L., Mansingh, G., & Osei-Bryson, K. 2012. Building ontology based knowledge maps to assist business process re-engineering, Decision Support Systems, Vol. 52, No. 3, pp. 577-589 Weerakkody, V., Janssen, M., Dwivedi, Y. 2011. Transformational change and business process reengineering (BPR): Lessons from the British and Dutch public sector, Government Information Quarterly, Vol. 28, No. 3, pp. 320-328 Yang, H. 2011. Business Process Reengineering and Functional Design of Information System Based on DFSS: A Case Study of Pharmaceutical Wholesale Enterprise, Applied Mechanics and Materials, Vol. 63-64, pp. 12-16 Read More