BPR - What does it means to organization who are underperforming - Assignment Example

25th September BPR-It’s meaning for underperforming Organizations According to Davenport (1990) a business process may be defined as a set of logically related tasks whose performance leads to a desired outcome. Re-engineering of these business processes means the analysis and re-design of workflow within and between enterprises. A cycle of BPR can be identified as under – (Radhakrishnan)Identify the present processes and the outcomes of these processesAnalyze the process, review them and find out the points where business processes are lacking.

Make a new design to re-align the business processes along the lines of best practices within the industry or even outside the industry.Implement the new business processes and test them.Once the BPR is done, we again analyze the processes which are being followed currently thus making BPR a continuous improvement process. When an underperforming organization embarks on a mission to re-engineer its business processes it can mean the turnaround of the firm or its complete collapse. As the firm is already underperforming so finding benchmarks will not be much difficult .

However the difficulty with such a firm will be employee motivation and resource crunch. These are the key issues to be dealt with when doing BPR for an underperforming firm. IT is one of the means through which BPR can be achieved ; it is not an end itself. (Guy Doumeingts) The ERP package is there to help the BPR process. Many firms equate BPR with the implementation of the ERP software. This is where IT becomes a hurdle rather than a support for BPR. The software should be molded to suit the business processes.

The processes and their outcomes are the important thing which needs to be re-organized by the firm; the software is not the important thing. When the latter assumes more importance and technical experts rather than functional people are made in charge of the BPR process IT becomes a hurdle and BPR fails. The reason for the failure of ERP implementation at Vicro communications were – Lack of employee buy in – Vicro did not make its employees part of the implementation process. The ERP was forced upon them by outsiders and no input was taken from their side.

Misfit of the ERP package selected with the business processes – Vicro’s business processes were highly customer specific. The ERP package was a misfit to these processes and thus further denigrated performance.Poor Project Design and Management – Vicro relied entirely on consultants for the implementation of the package. The vendor was not able to keep its promises and Vicro had to pay for its failureBPR equated with the software – Vicro made no efforts to actually focus on the business processes and re-engineer them.

Its entire focus was on the software implementation. The implementation of this software was accepted to improve the processes as well which never happened.Things which could have done differently by Vicro in order to ensure success of the project – Make Business people owner of the change – Instead of the ERP package being forced by vendors from outside, functional people of the company who run the business should have been made owner of the processes and the vendor responsible to them.Get Universal Buy in – In order to reduce employee’s resistance to change proper education should have been provided to them regarding the implementation and the benefits from it.

Their suggestions and feedback should have been taken.Proper Requirement Definition – ERP implementation was made as the major aim by Vicro. This was an improper requirement. The main aim should have been to improve the business process; the software was just a tool to achieve the aim of improving the business.Unrealistic Expectations of Benefits and ROI – One of the reasons CEO chose HPT was because they claimed they will force everyone to improve standards. The top management had invested millions of dollars in ERP implementation and wanted results at any cost; regardless what the business felt.

Works CitedGuy Doumeingts, Jimmie Browne. Modelling techniques for business process re-engineering and benchmarking. New York: Springer, 1997.Radhakrishnan, Radhakrishnan/balasubramanian. Business Process Reengineering: Text And Cases. New Delhi: Pretice Hall of India , 2008.