Groupware, Workflow and Intranets: Reengineering the Enterprise with Collaborative Software
How groupware and workflow technologies can improve organizational efficiency.
TABLE OF CONTENTS Groupware, Workflow and Intranets: Reengineering the Enterprise with Collaborative Software
Chapter 2: Reengineering and Process Improvement Using Collaborative Software
Why Reengineer?
Companies reengineer because of the promise of massive improvements in the efficiency of their business operations leading to improved business performance and better customer service. Promises offered include customer service index increased by 100%; time for issuing a loan reduced by 200%; staff needed for a process reduced by 300%. This chapter shows how groupware and workflow software can help in reengineering the enterprise.
So, how can collaborative software help reengineer the enterprise? The processes ripe for assistance are typically manual business processes which involve information processing when providing an internal or external customer with a service. Collaborative software is important to reengineering since the traditional hierarchies created in larger companies are usually broken down. The new, flatter structure with more process oriented teams needs software to support it. Of course collaborative software is not only used when companies are undertaking large scale reengineering, but can also be used with smaller scale improvements in the operation of a company.
Caution Required The Reengineering Gamble
The logic behind the radical redesign or reengineering of processes is that while small adjustments and automation of existing processes may result in some performance improvements, these will be small in magnitude measured in tens of percent. With BPR much larger gains, possibly of several hundred percent in performance, can be achieved. But reengineering also offers the largest risk.
Despite the promise of tremendous improvements, many reengineering projects fail; some surveys show the failure rate at 70 to 80%, so a cautious approach is...
Copyright Butterworth-Heinemann 1998 under license agreement with Books24x7
