Business process reengineering Business process reengineering (BPR) is, in computer science and management, an approach aiming at improvements

by means of elevating efficiency and effectiveness of the business process that exist within and across organizations. The key to BPR is for organizations to look at their business processes from a "clean slate" perspective and determine how they can best construct these processes to improve how they conduct business.

Business Process Reengineering Cycle: Transformation, or Business Process Change Management. Reengineering is a fundamental rethinking and radical redesign of business processes to achieve dramatic improvements in cost, quality, Business process reengineering is also known as BPR, Business Process Redesign, Business speed, and service. BPR combines a strategy of promoting business innovation with a strategy of making major improvements to business processes so that a company can become a much stronger and more successful competitor in the marketplace. In 1990, Michael Hammer, a former professor of computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), published an article in the Harvard Business Review, in which he claimed that the major challenge for managers is to obliterate non-value adding work, rather than using technology for automating it.[2] This statement implicitly accused managers of having focused on the wrong issues, namely that technology in general, and more specifically information technology, has been used primarily for automating existing processes rather than using it as an enabler for making non-value adding work obsolete.

Overview Business process reengineering (BPR) began as a private sector technique to help organizations fundamentally rethink how they do their work in order to dramatically improve customer service, cut operational costs, and become world-class competitors. A key stimulus for reengineering has been the continuing development and deployment of sophisticated information systems and networks. Leading organizations are becoming bolder in using this technology to support innovative business processes, rather than refining current ways of doing work.[1] Business process reengineering is one approach for redesigning the way work is done to better support the organization's mission and reduce costs. Reengineering starts with a high-level assessment of the organization's mission, strategic goals, and customer needs. Basic questions are asked, such as "Does our mission need to be redefined? Are our strategic goals aligned with our mission? Who are our customers?" An organization may find that it is operating on questionable assumptions, particularly in terms of the wants and needs of its customers. Only after the organization rethinks what it should be doing, does it go on to decide how best to do it.[1]

Within the framework of this basic assessment of mission and goals, reengineering focuses on the organization's business processes--the steps and procedures that govern how resources are used to create products and services that meet the needs of particular customers or markets. Basic elements of business process: Motivation to perform Data gathering, processing and storing Information processing Checking, validating and control Decision making Communication

A business process in any area of business organization performs through basic steps, such as, receive input, measure, analyze, document, perform, process, record/store, access, produce and communicate. As a structured ordering of work steps across time and place, a business process can be decomposed into specific activities, measured, modeled, and improved. It can also be completely redesigned or eliminated altogether. Reengineering identifies, analyzes, and redesigns an organization's core(critical) business processes with the aim of achieving dramatic improvements in critical performance measures, such as cost, quality, service, and speed.[1] Reengineering recognizes that an organization's business processes are usually fragmented into sub processes and tasks that are carried out by several specialized functional areas within the organization. Often, no one is responsible for the overall performance of the entire process. Reengineering maintains that optimizing the performance of sub processes can result in some benefits, but cannot yield dramatic improvements if the process itself is fundamentally inefficient and outmoded. For that reason, reengineering focuses on redesigning the process as a whole in order to achieve the greatest possible benefits to the organization and their customers. This drive for realizing dramatic improvements by fundamentally rethinking how the organization's work should be done distinguishes reengineering from process improvement efforts that focus on functional or incremental improvement. Process of BPR Exercise: Recast people organization into process organization o Segregate process by customer type-internal and external o Identify process by:
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o o o

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o Impact on customer o High decision incidence o High information exchange o High incidence of checks, control and validations o High knowledge base Determine the value to the customer in terms of: o Price/Cost o Quality o Service o Delivery Identify the enablers of redesigning Set a benchmark for achievement Rank the process by: o Feasibility o Cost o Impact on value to the customer Appoint the team for each process Monitor the process of re-engineering

Methodology Although the labels and steps differ slightly, the early methodologies that were rooted in IT-centric BPR solutions share many of the same basic principles and elements. The following outline is one such model, based on the PRLC (Process Reengineering Life Cycle) approach developed by Guha. 1. Structural organization with functional units 2. Introduction of New Product Development as cross-functional process 3. Re-structuring and streamlining activities, removal of non-value adding tasks 1. Envision new processes 1. Secure management support 2. Identify reengineering opportunities 3. Identify enabling technologies 4. Align with corporate strategy 2. Initiating change 1. Set up reengineering team 2. Outline performance goals 3. Process diagnosis

1. Describe existing processes 2. Uncover pathologies in existing processes 4. Process redesign 1. Develop alternative process scenarios 2. Develop new process design 3. Design HR architecture 4. Select IT platform 5. Develop overall blueprint and gather feedback 5. Reconstruction 1. Develop/install IT solution 2. Establish process changes 6. Process monitoring 1. Performance measurement, including time, quality, cost, IT performance 2. Link to continuous improvement Successes:

BPR, if implemented properly, can give huge returns. BPR has helped giants like Procter and Gamble Corporation and General Motors Corporation succeed after financial drawbacks due to competition. It helped American Airlines somewhat get back on track from the bad debt that is currently haunting their business practice. BPR is about the proper method of implementation.

BPR AT DELL Michael Dell mentions: "If you have a good strategy with sound economics, the real challenge is to get people excited about what you're doing. A lot of businesses get off track because they don't communicate an excitement about being part of a winning team that can achieve big goals. If a company can't motivate its people and it doesn't have a clear compass, it will drift." [13] Dell's stocks have been ranked as the top stock for the decade of the 1990s, when it had a return of 57,282% (Knestout and Ramage, 1999). Michael Dell is now concentrating more on customer service than selling computers since the PC market price has pretty much equalized.

Conclusion: An intense customer focus, superior process design and a strong and motivated leadership are vital ingredients to the recipe for the success of any business corporation. Reengineering is the key that every organization should possess to attain these prerequisites to success. BPR doesnt offer a miracle cure on a platter. Nor does it provide a painless quick fix. Rather it advocates strenuous hard work and instigates the people involved to not only to change what they do but targets at altering their basic way of thinking itself. In this paper we have attempted in evolving a structured approach to reengineering