BUSINESS PROCESS RE-ENGINEERING
Business process improvement or process re-engineering is a complex undertaking that demands leadership from the highest levels of the organisation and participation from virtually all executives, managers, and professional employees.
- Begin with a statement of mission, vision, objectives, goals, and strategies
- Produce a re-engineered business process to support the stated organisational mission and related strategic and business plans
- Continue through information systems design, deployment, and operations consistent with the Enterprise Model
- Employ process management principles to ensure that process improvement gains are held
- Focus on cultural and organisational change management issues and structural barriers to change that represent the most risk-prone component of process improvement efforts
Planning Phase
Planning activities analyse the current processes with respect to the external environment and the organisational and technological infrastructure to develop a vision for that defines where the organisation wants to be and how to get there.
Process Re-engineering Phase
Process reengineering activities consider planning outputs, technology enablers, and stakeholder requirements to design improved processes that advance the organisation toward its planned future state. Re-engineering seeks to make processes dramatically more effective and efficient. These activities also provide inputs to the change management program, which conditions the organisation for the coming enhanced processes.
Organisational Change Management Phase
Organisational change management program activities define a series of cultural, organisational, and personnel-related changes necessary to remove barriers to change and maximize the potential of improved or reengineered processes.
Technical Change Management Phase
Technical change management programmes ensure that the technology changes needed to support reengineered processes are consistent with the technology platform and the Enterprise Model. Technology improvement program activities are also concerned with such issues as legacy systems, migration systems, and systems integration.
Enterprise Engineering Phase
Enterprise engineering activities provide the hardware, communications, software, and data base structures needed to support the reengineered process. These activities also provide inputs to both change management phases (2B and 2C) to help ensure that all elements of process improvement - process, people, and technology - are designed to be mutually supporting.
Project Execution Phase
Project execution activities bring together the planned process, organisational, and technology changes under a project management concept to provide a coherent and manageable means of incorporating all design changes into the existing internal environment (organisation, technology and process). Project execution activities include implementation, deployment, operations, maintenance, and continuing process improvement.
All of the activities in the four mainline phases (planning, process re-engineering, enterprise engineering, and project execution) and the supporting phases (organisational change management and technology improvement) ultimately result in a new level of performance for the organization.
The Business Engineering Management Model
Figure above organizes the Framework methodology into a format that illustrates the management processes supporting the methodology. This format emphases how management decisions flow from phase to phase as the inputs shown on the left of the process box are transformed into the outputs displayed on the right.
Change management is shown in the centre to reinforce its critical importance in the success of the other phases. Nothing can happen until and unless the organisation, its managers, and its employees understand and support improvement efforts. Each of the inputs to the model is transformed dramatically by the improvement process.
Current business processes are improved, redesigned to maximize efficiency, or re-engineered to achieve maximum effectiveness. Funding is eventually transformed from a constraint on process performance into an enabler of superior organisational performance.
Existing technology is modernised into effective enablers of further process improvement performance in pursuit of information age values. Under-utilised assets are redeployed to processes that demonstrate superior customer-centred performance. The organisational structure and associated management and employee practices, are transformed into effective resources in support of process management principles.
Teamwork, empowerment, enriched job responsibilities, skill-based recognition and reward systems, continual training, and employee resourcefulness are the eventual outcomes that produce a high-performance, satisfying work place.
