TABLE OF CONTENTS Total organizational excellence requires not only commitment but also a competence in the mechanics of process management.
Successful practitioners of business process re-engineering (BPR) have made striking improvements in customer satisfaction and productivity in short periods of time by following some simple steps which are explained in this chapter. Crucial early stages will involve establishment of the current process structure, collecting performance measurement information, teamwork, systems and training.
Change must create something which did not exist before, namely a learning organization capable of adapting to a changing competitive environment. When processes or even the whole business needs to be re-engineered, the radical change may, probably will, not be readily accepted. This chapter will provide guidance and support to those engaged in this most difficult of sciences/arts. It describes the typical phases of a project and considers the issues of managing the changes, and the roles of information technology in supporting BPR.
When it has been recognized that a major business process requires radical reassessment, business process re-engineering or re-design (BPR) methods are appropriate. In their book Re-Engineering the Corporation, Hammer and Champy talked about re-inventing the nature of work, starting again reinventing our corporations from top to bottom. BPR was launched on a wave of organizations needing to completely re-think how and why they do what they do in order to cope with the ever-changing world, particularly the development of IT solutions.
The reality is, of course, that many processes in many...
