How Can Business Process Re-engineering Boost Job Satisfaction and Efficiency?

Business Processes Re-engineering:-
Business process re-engineering is a fundamental rethinking and radical redesign of business processes to achieve dramatic improvement in cost, quality, speed, and service.
BPR combines a strategy of promoting business innovation with a strategy of making major improvements in business processes so that a company can become a much stronger and more successful competitor in the marketplace.

'Fundamental rethinking' calls for questioning everything that has been followed, practiced, and found acceptable for centuries. It rejects old legacies and proven practices.
'Radical redesign' calls for trimming and chopping of these designs so that the cost is reduced, service is improved, and the customer gets higher value at a higher speed.

BPR is a management approach aiming at improvement by means of elevating the efficiency and effectiveness of the processes that exist within and across organizations. The key to BPR is for organizations to look at their business processes from a 'clean slate' perspective and determine how they can best construct these processes.

Characteristics:
• Several jobs are combined into one.
• Decision-making becomes part of the job.
• Steps in the business processes are performed in the natural order, and several jobs get done simultaneously.
• This enables the economies of scale that result from mass production, yet allows customization of products and services.
• Work is shifted across organizations and, if necessary, even international boundaries.
• Control and checks and the non-value work are minimized.
• Reconciliation is minimized by cutting the number of external contacts.
• A hybrid centralized/decentralized operation is used.
• A single point of contact is provided to customers.

Phases in BPR:
1. Begin organizational change
i. Assess the current state of the organization
ii. Explain the need for change
iii. Illustrate the desired state
iv. Create a communication campaign for change
2. Build the reengineered organization
3. Identify BPR opportunities
4. Understand the existing process
5. Reengineer the process
6. Blueprint the new business system
7. Perform the transformation

Technology-enabled reengineering:
It is also called 'concurrent transformation.' It means that the reengineering process is constrained by the selected systems. Choices are a direct function of the software, and hence the systems are ready, and it is not necessary to change them. This approach is faster and cheaper than clean slate reengineering.

R is Just as Valid Today as it Was Ten Years Ago

He added, however, that in light of experience gained, re-engineering on its own is not nearly sufficient. It has to be complemented by a range of other changes, for example, to performance measures and pay systems that encourage a focus on corporate, rather than departmental, objectives, to putting customers at the center of all processes, to shared responsibility and empowerment, and to moving away from confrontation towards building collaborative partnerships with suppliers and even competitors.

In any change program, the human issues are as critical as the changes to the processes themselves.

Improvements in Process Quality from BPR

The improvements in process quality to be gained from BPR lie in three dimensions—process efficiency (e.g., cost, cycle time), product quality (e.g., customer satisfaction, scope, and quality of product), and reduced product development time.

Advantages of BPR:

- Puts the customer at the center of the organization.
- Helps identify core activities and processes as well as inefficient or obsolete ones.
- Encourages greater staff involvement and helps them focus on overall corporate objectives.
- Can dramatically reduce customer response, new product development, and process activity times.
- Can lead to 'quantum leap' improvements in business results—if planned and implemented carefully.

Disadvantages of BPR:

- It is more suited to products and services that involve logical sequences in production. It may be less suitable for highly variable processes.
- May require a high level of investment in IT.
- Requires good teamwork and a high degree of planning and implementation expertise.
- Can be seen as a real threat to jobs.
- Success is not automatically guaranteed.

Action Checklist:

BPR comprises a sequence of successive, integrated activities.

1. Develop the Vision

Create a grand, clear vision. Thinking big and bold is the essence of BPR. This must, however, be rooted in the real world. Questions to ponder are—What are we in business for? Where are we now? Where do we want to be in, say, five years? How do we get there? Who and where are our customers?

Draw up an outline strategy with ambitious but achievable goals for the organization. Use appropriate survey techniques to listen to customers, benchmark the competition, and analyze existing skills and competencies throughout the organization. Identify gaps between what is currently available and what will be needed in terms of skills, investment, IT, and other resources.

2. Map or Model Existing Processes

Map or model and document current processes and workflows in detail if necessary. An understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of existing processes and systems, e.g., bottlenecks or discontinuity, will be of immense benefit when planning new ones. This should also reduce the possibility of past inefficient practices being perpetuated. The views of the owners of existing processes will help in this analysis.

The map or model should identify what new or revised IT systems are required, and the skills, competencies, and knowledge required by the end users of each process.

3. Redesign the New Processes

Using the vision, mission, and strategy as a guiding framework, start with the needs of the customer and redesign the processes from outside-in. Apply the following guidelines to the redesign process:

- Identify the business processes required to produce key business outcomes and show clearly how processes interrelate.
- Identify all the inputs required for each process—raw materials, staff, skills and competencies, IT support, equipment.
- Lay out the infrastructure required to support the changes by describing the:
- Management strategy, measurement systems, and reward programs
- Organizational values and individual belief systems that need to be adopted by all.
- Improve customer service through genuine empowerment, trust, and delegation of responsibility, allowing partnerships to develop with customers and suppliers.
- Ensure that processes transcend, and are not hindered by, departmental boundaries.
- Involve all staff, especially those at the sharp end—the users of the processes.
- Involve key external partners, such as suppliers, if their operations will be affected.
- Schedules, budgets, completion criteria, and economic justifications all need to be specified.
- New control systems need to be established.
- Contingencies are needed to allow for delays or unforeseen problems.
- Allow for changes in physical location or layout, workflows and organization structures, plant and IT systems, testing and pilot projects, and a redefinition of roles and responsibilities that will result from the process.

4. IT Support Systems

Most changes of any significance are likely to be underpinned by changes in IT systems. Research indicates that one of the prime causes of failure of new IT systems to deliver the expected results is ignoring the human element. In the same way that processes should be built around the customer, IT should be built around the end users—the internal customers. The following need to be considered:

- The new IT systems should be designed to support all the new processes, which should not have to be shoe-horned into ill-fitting programs.
- IT procedures should be easily understood, mastered, and exploited by end users: hence the need to involve them in the design process at the earliest stages. Much thought needs to be given to the skills, competencies, and training needed to operate the new systems.
- IT should help facilitate the achievement of individual, departmental, and corporate goals.
- The new system may need to be tested in parallel with the existing, possibly for many months. This creates extra pressure on the whole organization.

5. Establish Performance Indicators

Improvements in performance can only be identified if you know where you are starting from. Select a balanced mix of traditional hard financial and other measures and some softer measures, such as attitudes to customers, levels of staff morale, job satisfaction, new skills learned, and so on. Make sure that the three dimensions of process efficiency, product quality, and product development times are carefully measured. Reward systems may need to be realigned to corporate objectives as well.

6. Plan the Implementation

- Appoint a project coordinator or team.
- Decide if implementation will be carried out in one major effort or in two or more phases.
- Decide on a start and finish date. If possible choose slack periods.
- Decide which existing and new processes and systems will be run in parallel before old ones are dropped.
- Prepare a detailed, prioritized day-by-day schedule for key staff, and an outline plan for everyone else.
- Ensure that key staff are fully briefed and that training has been given where appropriate.
- Ensure that key external partners, such as suppliers, are fully briefed as to how, and from when, the changes will affect their operations.
- Notify key customers, and other key partners that normal service will be resumed as soon as possible. Put details on the corporate website (if one), with contact names and details.
- Allow sufficient time for testing, settling in, tweaking, troubleshooting, and general "hand-holding". This is likely to be a particularly stressful time for those at the sharp edge.
- Issue regular progress reports.

7. Review and Maintenance

The performance indicators should provide a comprehensive overview of how well the new organization is doing, and may identify areas or activities for further development, particularly those not meeting strategic objectives. Allocate adequate resources for continuous maintenance.

8. The Human Element

Redundancies may result from the planned changes. Keeping staff informed at all stages reduces the risk of rumors with their inevitable long-term negative effects on morale, fear of further job losses, resistance to change, and general uncertainty. Clear policies should be in place for the two groups of staff affected—those being made redundant (if any) and the "survivors". Issues to consider include:

- The fair and equitable selection of those who may be made redundant and associated support programs, including redeployment within or outside the company, counseling, job hunting, and redundancy packages.
- The need to demonstrate strong commitment to survivors by rebuilding their confidence, commitment, and loyalty through retraining programs covering the new shape of the organization, new processes and new IT procedures, and new performance and pay systems. Indicate what further training and development, counseling, and other forms of support are available. Reassure staff on a regular basis.

Dos and Don'ts for BPR:

Do

- Question all assumptions. Identify the organization's 'sacred cows' and study them carefully.
- Choose your new consultants model carefully.

Don't

- Go for BPR simply because everyone else is doing it.
- Confuse BPR with downsizing.
- Assume you are on the right BPR track merely by introducing the latest IT.
- Embark on change projects without resources and support to complete—and maintain—them.

Useful Reading:

Books

Journal articles

Related checklists

- Total quality: mapping a TQM strategy
- Total quality: getting TQM to work
- Mapping an effective change program
- Implementing the Balanced Scorecard
- A program for benchmarking

Thought Starters:

- Do you know what are the existing core processes in your organization?
- The chief causes of failure of BRP projects are neglect of the human factor, the poor selection of consultants, and inadequate commitment from senior management.
- If you are considering BPR, examine your reasons very carefully—they will probably indicate your probable success.