BPR: Redefining a Measurable Era of Corporate Change

Business Process Reengineering is an approach whereby existing human and automated workflows are analyzed systematically to reduce both the organizational costs and unnecessary business processes.

Solving Operation and Strategic Issues

Business processes are activities which are propagated across the different business units. The basic notion implied by this terminology is that issues, whether they are operational or strategic, could only be comprehended at the activity level. The inventors of BPR have proclaimed the novelty of their approach for its usability to effectuate corporate change.  The concept of BPR was introduced as a means of rethinking and re-engineering the business processes to acquire beneficial improvements in critically measuring performances in domains of cost, speed, quality, and service.

How does BPR Work

BPR initiates with the central processes of the company being analyzed and then rendering them in a different order to acquire efficiency and then crushing the frequently unnecessary functional distinctions.

Functional piles were a secure cove for information, for instance, and so occupied space in the scheme of things. Therefore, these piles were needed to be broken down into multiple processes and then distribute them in a more streamlined fashion.

Implementation of BPR

There have been numerous established corporations that have successfully implemented BPR. For instance, Kodak re-engineered its manufacturing process of a black and white film which then reduced the firm’s new order response time in half. There was also a card company that goes by the name Hallmark. It applied BPR to its new-product process. I will present its case study in the following content.

Business Process Reengineering Case Study: Hallmark  

It used to take three years for Hallmark to bring in their new product to the market. After they identified various niche markets for their products, the executives there realized that they need a new design for their product development process. They defined their preferred period for the new product to be one year, by using re-engineering.

Through the re-engineering, they found out that they spent more time on planning and conceptualizing as opposed to printing and manufacturing the cards. A creative staffer would be given ample time to generate a new formulation before it got finalized.  

After picking up the inefficiency in their product cycle, a cross-functional team was created for product development, and a new line of cards was introduced in the market four months before the intended time.

Business Process Reengineering Case Study: Ford

Ford was famous for its “account payable process”. Its starting point was the purchasing department that sent the initial purchase order to the vendor. The very department was then required to send the copy of the purchase order to the accounts payable department. After getting the raw materials, the accounts payable department receives the invoice from the vendor which they then tally for the order made, and the materials received. After confirmation, they proceed to pay the vendor. Now here comes the human resource issue: almost 500 people were employed to execute this process.

Now there were sizable companies at that time which executed the same process with only 100 employees.

It was Michael Hammer that put forth the idea of process re-engineering by proposing them to eliminate the invoice. After that, the buyer would not be required to send the purchasing order’s copy to the account payable department. In place of that, an online database would be used to log an order. The storekeeper would check the order items with that of the store. Hence, the potential of information technology was tapped into to re-engineer the payment process. Through there invoice-less payment process, Ford was able to benefit a lot! The process was done with only 125 employees after this change was implemented.

Now, most often the concern is what if the re-engineering fails? Try to look for the workflow management solution whereby you can track the effects on time when you are trying to reengineer your IT infrastructure.

Infowise

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