Business Process Re-engineering

03 – Process Re-Design & Process Improvement

Beginning Process Re-Design

Slide 2 of 21
 Process Re-design

Two approaches to BPR:

• Systematic re-design
- identify / understand the existing process
- It is reviewing current processes and then making the
relevant improvements
• Clean sheet approach
- Rethinking the way the product / service is delivered and
design a new process from the start
- It is like demolishing an old building and rebuilding
instead of patching it up.

Slide 3 of 21
 Defining processes

A simple way to begin defining processes:

• Identify a set of processes
- executives work back from their own responsibilities (they
know their work processes best)
• Rationale to establish main processes
- identify major and minor processes
- categorise processes as innovation, delivery and
infrastructure
- group related processes together
• Define process boundaries
- what is the process owner’s control?
- where is the process customer’s involvement?

Slide 4 of 21
 Guidelines for selecting processes

Processes selected for re-engineering should be:

• Major contributors to core competencies (key processes for
e.g. marketing & sales)
• Ready for change – at an acceptable level of risk (some
processes may take a very long time for change)
• Able to produce early successes (early hits)
• Interrelated with other processes (across functions or
departments)

Slide 5 of 21
 Definition of Visualisation

To enable radical changes and dramatic improvements to

processes:

• Visualisation is:
– moving a process from an ‘As-is’ state to a ‘To-be’ state
– the creative process of developing achievable visions of the
‘To-be’ state
• Visualisation involves:
– understanding what others do well
– deciding attainable but tough improvement targets (“stretch
goals”)
– thinking ahead of the competition to achieve the competitive
“edge”
– a high level design to pragmatic solutions for the current
business state
Slide 6 of 21
 Process Redesign Issues

Some of the issues related to redesign include:

• Motivation – lack of motivation to enable redesign to

processes
• Attitude – there may be resistance
• Knowledge – not all may have information on the
processes
• Creativity – lack of creative ideas
• Innovation – not easy and challenging; thinking ‘out of
the box’

Slide 7 of 21
BPR Project Structure
&
Methodology

Slide 8 of 21
 BPR Project Structure
Stages to a BPR Project

Strategy
Insight
Develop full understanding of current situation

Analysis

Invent new ways of achieving business objectives

Invent
Visualisation

Transition from current situation to new ways

Deployment
Implement
Optimise performance
Continuous
Improvement

Slide 9 of 21
 Insight
Strategy
Stages to a BPR Project
Interviews & Develop
Strategy Scope and plan
Surveys Assessment

Deliver:
BPR plan

Slide 10 of 21
 Insight
Analysis
Stages to a BPR Project

Tools and Techniques

Current Process Problems: Metrics

Analysis Assumptions

Baseline of
current operations

Deliver:
Comprehensive
understanding
Quick hits

Slide 11 of 21
 Invent
Visualisation
Stages to a BPR Project

Tools and Techniques

Visualisation Benchmarks; Invent new Evaluate

Stretch goals
BestPractice processes options

Deliver:
Implementable
processes to
meet objectives
Business case
Slide 12 of 21
 Implement
Deployment
Stages to a BPR Project
Deliver:
Implementable
processes to
meet objectives
Business case

IT Strategy

Process Deployment Implement Staff - training

Deployment design plan new IT & organisation

Slide 13 of 21
 Implement
Continuous improvement
Stages to a BPR Project

Deliver:
Optimised
processes;
Measured
improvement

Continuous Performance Fine tune new TQM

Improvement measurement processes

Slide 14 of 21
 BPR Methodology

Generic Methodology

1. Create a Reengineering Framework

• to build a comprehensive foundation and framework for
the entire process reengineering change effort that will
create the required focus, direction, and motivation
necessary to sustain itself.

2. Identify Customers and Determine Needs

• to develop a concrete and comprehensive understanding
of the customers of the targeted process, and their
needs and wants, that will result in a redesigned
business process that clearly provides added value to
the customer.

Slide 15 of 21
 BPR Methodology

3. Map the Existing Process

• to gain an understanding of the "what" and "why" of the
targeted process that will reinforce the need for
significant change and provide a basis for the redesign
step.

4. Measure Process Performance

• to gain the needed performance understanding of the
targeted process through the collection of appropriate
and relevant data, and to translate the data into redesign
goals

Slide 16 of 21
 BPR Methodology

Davenport & Short

• Identify processes for innovation

• Identifying change levers (enabling or transformation
technologies)
• Developing process vision
• Understanding and improving existing process
• Designing and prototyping the new process

Slide 17 of 21
 BPR Methodology

Hammer & Champy

– Identify the core process using process mapping.
– Identify process requiring reengineering
– High level understanding of the current process from a customer
perspective
– Process redesign using the following principles (Hammer 1990):
• Organize around outcomes not task
• Have those who use the output of the process perform the process
• Subsume information-processes work into the real work that produces
the information
• Treat geographically dispersed resources as though they were
centralized
• Link parallel activities instead of integrating their results
• Put the decision point where the work is performed and build control
into the process
• Capture information once and at the source.
Slide 18 of 21
Barriers to BPR

Slide 19 of 21
 Barriers to BPR

• Potential barriers
– Hard implementation
– Soft implementation

• Potential causes of barriers

– project
– people
– organisation
– environments

Slide 20 of 21
Barriers to BPR

Slide 21 of 21