What is business process re-engineering (BPR)?

Business process re-engeneering (BPR)

Business process re-engineering (BPR) is a redesigning technique of business processes A set of logically related tasks performed to achieve a desired business outcome.to achieve dramatic improvements in significant performance measures like quality, output, cost, service, and speed.

It aims to cut down the costs of an enterprise to increase its efficiency and achieve breakthrough results. A BRP can be applied to any level of a business process.

Why do we need it?

New market opportunities, poor financial performance, decreasing market share, and an increasing competition trigger the need for a business process transformation to keep itself up to date. Therefore, BRP is used to achieve the retransformation process.

Principles

The following principles were proposed by Michael Hammer and James Champy, which are necessary to follow and keep the redesigning procedure up to the mark and fair:

  • Organize around outcomes, not tasks.

  • List all the organization's processes and rank them according to their priority.

  • Integrate the work of processing information with the actual work of generating information.

  • Centralize the geographically diverse sources.

  • Instead of just compiling results, also link similar activities in the workflow.

  • Place decision points where work is being done to create control over the process.

  • Capture information directly at the source at once.

Phases

The BPR process is divided into three stages:

  • Analysis

  • Design

  • Implementation

The following flowchart explains all the activities in each phase:

The three phases of BPR

Steps of implementing BPR

Process re-engineering focuses on redesigning entire processes, including fundamentally rethinking an organization's work to achieve dramatic improvements. BPR is not feasible for all business processes, especially those that are not willing to undergo a complete change in their organization. There are five steps involved in BPR:

  1. Reset the business goals: Senior management communicates and forms the plan of action.

  2. Establish a skillful team: The team must be cross-functional as they are required to work on different aspects of the business process. Things must be made clear to the team, and the strategies must be adequately outlined.

  3. Single out the processes to be redesigned: At this step, it must be clear which processes are to be redesigned. Once selected, the tasks of each process can be broken down and organized into a flowchart.

  4. Redesign the process: The process must be redesigned to overcome the shortcomings of the previous process.

  5. Implementation: Once the design is made, it must be first implemented on a single system to check its working before implementing it company-wide.

Steps of implementation of BPR

Advantages of BPR

The following are some advantages of BPR:

  • It is expandable, scalable, and flexible.

  • It has vast functionalities, including templates and reference models.

  • It is tightly integrated among different modules.

Disadvantages of BPR

The following are some disadvantages of BPR:

  • It is dependent on the size and availability of resources and may not be affordable for every business.

  • It is a lengthy process.

Conclusion

BPR works when applied by motivated and trained individuals who recognize that process redesign is an ongoing activity. When BPR is effectively executed, information systems are better integrated into business processes.

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