The Role of IT in BPR
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
I. Introduction. 3
II. The former and new business
environment 4
2.1. The former business
environment 4
2.2. The new business
environment 4
2.3. The three main changes in
the business environment 6
2.4. The implications of these
three changes 8
III. The
BPR concept 11
3.1. Why the current interests ? 12
3.2. The principles of BPR. 13
3.3. The promises of BPR 14
3.4. Business processes and
process management 16
3.5. The role of IS department
in BPR 17
3.6. The human aspects of BPR
21
IV. The role of IT in BPR 22
4.1. IT components 23
4.2. Disruptive IT technologies
24
4.3. Traditional supportive
role 25
4.4. The emerging strategic
role 27
4.5. IT in perspective 28
V. The Five Level of BPR . 30
5.1. Localized exploitation 32
5.2. Internal integration 33
5.3. Business process redesign 35
5.4. Business network redesign
37
5.5. Business scope
redefinition 38
5.6. Exploiting IT capabilities
as strategic resource 39
5.7. How to make BPR work 39
VI. Conclusion 40
BIBLIOGRAPHY 42
I. Introduction
Despite a decade or more of
restructuring, downsizing, total quality management (TQM), Business Process
Re-engineering (BPR) and other management techniques, and heavy investment in
Information Technology (IT), many companies are not ready to operate in the
21st century. Today companies know that heavy investment in IT and employment
of these management techniques simply cannot keep them from disappointing
results because they tend to use IT and these techniques to mechanize old ways
of doing business without changing existing processes and understanding of
employee behaviour.
Many of today's job designs,
work flows, control mechanisms, organizational structures and mental pictures
about employees, suppliers, and customers came of age around the 1950s. That
was a different competitive environment and before the advent of computer,
satellite communications, and global competition. Those rules depend on Adam
Smith's brilliant discovery, the business processes should be broken down into
its simplest and most basic tasks. It was the main idea that has been revised
around the 1900s by Frederick W. Taylor, and refined around the 1950s for mass
production and service companies. The main focuses were geared towards
efficiency, control, cost, growth, economies of scale,
stability, and centralization.
These old principles met the
expanding demand for mass market products and services for nearly two hundred
years but they are not sufficient enough in today's global market place. It
means that companies must abandon these old organizational and operational
principles and procedures and some of the basic assumptions about employees,
customers, suppliers and find out entirely new ones to compete in the global
market.
It can be said that the new
organization will not look much like today's corporations, and the ways in
which they purchase, produce, sell, appraise human resources, manage work
forces, and deliver products and services will be very different. The rate of
change in the business world is accelerating. Futuristic start-ups have
creative organizational charts and innovative ways of management, innovative
cultural-changes, downsizing, merger and acquisitions, computer systems
connection between supplier and producer, supplier representatives working in
producers' plants, and on-time-delivery.
It seems that there is an
imbalance between the human and business side of the today's business system.
Before saying anything about IT factor of BPR, it would be helpful to define
and compare the former and current business environment.
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