ROLE OF I.

T IN BPR

Submitted By
MEHERVAAN SINGH KOHLI

Role of IT in BPR

Table of Contents
ROLE OF I.T IN BPR.....................................................................................................................1
Submitted By...................................................................................................................................1
Table of Contents.............................................................................................................................2
INTRODUCTION.......................................................................................4
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN IT & BPR.......................................................................6
IT Capabilities and Reengineering...........................................................7
Phase 1: before the process is designed (as an enabler)......................8
Phase 2: while the process is being designed (as a facilitator).....................10
Phase 3: after the design is complete (as an implementer) ............................13
ROLE OF IT IN REENGINEERING...........................................................................17
Principles of Reengineering by Hammer..........................................................18
BPR The Current focus in IT.....................................................................21
DATA BASE:...........................................................................................................21
Data Mining:..............................................................................................................21
Data Warehousing......................................................................................................22
STRATEGIC USES OF IT AND CRITICALITY OF IT ............................................................23
BPR TOOLS AND TECHNIQUES..............................................................................................23
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Role of IT in BPR
The Nature of IT Support for BPR................................................................................24
Integrated Enterprise Models.....................................................................................25
Analysis......................................................................................................................27
Software Functionality...............................................................................................29
New ways of building models....................................................................................30
Communication and Visualization.............................................................................31
Intended Users...........................................................................................................31
Evaluation Criteria.........................................................................................................32
Enterprise Models......................................................................................................32
Analysis......................................................................................................................32
Visualization..............................................................................................................33
Requirements for BPR Tools.........................................................................................33
Enterprise Models......................................................................................................33
Analysis......................................................................................................................34
Software Functionality...............................................................................................35
Integrated Environment for Tools..............................................................................35
Model Acquisition.....................................................................................................35
Visualization..............................................................................................................35
Intended Users...........................................................................................................36

Role of IT in BPR
Management...................................................................................................................36
Human Resources..........................................................................................................36
Enterprise Models......................................................................................................36
Software Functionality...............................................................................................37
Degrees of Automation..................................................................................................37
IT ENABLERS OF BPR.....................................................................................38
IT Drives BPR........................................................................39
IT in reference process reengineering.........................................................40
Role of CIOs in Process Reengineering.........................................................................41
FUTURE ROLE OF IT IN BPR....................................................................................................42
CONCLUSION..............................................................................................................................43

INTRODUCTION
Today's environment is characterized by increasing levels of competition. Enterprises
wanting to increase their market share or obtain profits must adapt to changes in the
environment. Consequently, many changes in business methods are beginning to appear. One of
them is business process reengineering (BPR), defined as the fundamental rethinking and radical
redesign of business processes to achieve dramatic improvements in critical, contemporary
measures of performance. Among the potential enablers of BPR is information technology (IT).
IT makes it possible to obtain improvements in BPR. Enterprises can make their tasks easier,
redesign their organization, change the way they work, and achieve spectacular improvement
using, among other enablers, IT.
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Role of IT in BPR
Market competition is forcing firms to reconsider how they are organized to compete. As
a basis for change, they are exploring a variety of concepts, including Time-based Competition,
Quality

Function

Deployment,

Activity-Based

Costing,

Quality

Circles,

Continuous

Improvement, Process Innovation, and Business Process Re-Engineering. Regrettably, most of

the concepts are descriptive, if not ad hoc, and lack a formal model which would enable their
consistent application across firms. Business process re-engineering is very much in the "guild"
mould of application; management consultants are the "masters" and they impart their
knowledge through "apprenticeship" to other consultants. The knowledge of business process reengineering has yet to be formalized and reduced to engineering practice.
Information technology (IT) has historically played an important role in the reengineering
concept. It is considered by some as a major enabler for new forms of working and collaborating
within an organization and across organizational borders. Early BPR literature identified several
so called disruptive technologies that were supposed to challenge traditional wisdom about how
work should be performed.

Shared databases, making information available at many places

Expert systems, allowing generalists to perform specialist tasks

Telecommunication networks, allowing organizations to be centralized and decentralized

at the same time

Decision-support tools, allowing decision-making to be a part of everybody's job

Wireless data communication and portable computers, allowing field personnel to work
office independent

Interactive videodisk, to get in immediate contact with potential buyers

Automatic identification and tracking, allowing things to tell where they are, instead of
requiring to be found

Role of IT in BPR

High performance computing, allowing on-the-fly planning and envisioning.

Business Process Reengineering (BPR) calls for a radical redesign and systematic

overhauling of strategic systems and processes in an organization. In the technology-centric

business environment of today, more and more organizations are using Information Technology
(IT) tools in their mainstream organizational processes. Hence, for BPR, it is required that the
functionalities of these IT systems are modified. This paper will demonstrate the importance of
IT in one of the most prominent methodologies.

RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN IT & BPR

The term reengineering first appeared in the Information technology (IT) field and has
evolved into a broader change process. The aim of this radical improvement approach is quick
and substantial gains in organizational performance by redesigning the core business process. In
the late 20th century, many US companies embraced reengineering as an effective tool to
implement changes to make the organization more efficient and competitive. The motivation was
usually the realization that there was a need to speed up the process, reduce needed resources,
improve productivity and efficiency, and improve competitiveness
The changing economic environment has led to an increasing interest in business process
reengineering (BPR) by progressive firms around the world. In the 1990s, significant reduction
in the cost of IT resulted in enormous investments in IT applications that have stimulated
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Role of IT in BPR
increasingly complex organizational change. Information technology has been used to break
down communication barriers between corporate functions, to empower line workers and to fuel
process reengineering. In most cases, IT has been used to expedite office work rather than to
transform it. Top executives consider IT a potent source of competitive advantage.
Working together, BPR and IT have the potential to create more flexible, team-oriented,
coordinative, and communication-based work capability. IT is more than a collection of tools for
automating or mechanizing processes. It can fundamentally reshape the way business is done and
enable the process design. In leading edge practices, information technology makes BPR
possible and worthwhile. BPR and IT are natural partners, yet their relationships have not been
fully explored.

IT Capabilities and Reengineering

IT has penetrated the office and services environment since the 1978. The shift from
mainframe to PC based technology is breaking down communication barriers between
employees and customers. Now managers and employees from various departments are
designing and controlling complex business information systems. IT capabilities involve
improving information access and coordination across organizational units. It is so powerful that
it can actually create new process design options, rather than simply support it. In his book,
Business @ the Speed of Thought, Bill Gates argues that if the 1980s were about quality and the
1990s were about reengineering, then the 2000s will be about velocity. Gates advocates complete
digitalization of all aspects of life. He argues that to be successful in the digital age, companies
need to develop a new digital infrastructure similar to the human nervous system. This new
digital system enables companies to run smoothly and efficiently, makes them respond quickly to
emergencies and opportunities, provides a mean for quickly getting valuable information to the
people in the company who need it. This in turn empowers employees to make decisions and
interact with customers.
What is the relation between BPR & Information Technology? Hammer and Champy
consider IT as the key enabler of BPR. Davenport argues that BPR requires taking a broader
view of both IT and business activity, and of the relationships between them. IT capabilities
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Role of IT in BPR
should support business processes, and business processes should be in terms of the capabilities
IT can provide. They believe ITs promise and its ultimate impact is to be the most powerful tool
for reducing the costs of coordination.
It has been argued that innovative uses of IT would inevitably lead many firms to develop
new, coordination- intensive structures, enabling them to coordinate their activities in ways that
were not possible before. Such coordination-intensive structures may lead to strategic
advantages.
IT roles can be categorized into three phases: before the process is designed, while the
process design is underway, and after the design is complete.

Phase 1: before the process is designed (as an enabler)

BPR is a strategic action and requires a clear understanding of customers, market,
industry and competitive directions. Furthermore, like any other strategic action, it requires
consistency between the companys business strategy and vision. Defining business strategy and
developing a strategic vision requires understanding the companys strengths and weaknesses,
and the market structure and opportunities.
The activities in this phase may include:
Developing a strategic vision.
Identifying the customers objectives.
Establishing goals/targets related to market share, costs, revenue enhancement, or
profit margins.
Assessing the potential for reengineering.
Defining boundaries and scope of the appropriate process.
Keeping management committed.

Role of IT in BPR
IT capabilities can provide good insight into the existing conditions. IT is one of several
enablers, including human resources and organizational change, that all must be considered
together to bring about change in business processes. Many companies ignore IT capabilities
until after a process is designed. An awareness of IT capabilities can and should influence
process design. Michael Hammer recommends companies to redefine the process first and
automate it second.
IT can play important roles in this phase of BPR efforts as follows:
1. The opportunity IT provides is to utilize newer and better technology to develop a
strategic vision and to help improve the business process before it is designed. For
example, an important Wal-Mart vision was to eliminate unnecessary distribution steps
and cost and to provide value to customers. To accomplish this, Wal-Mart developed a
strategy that included linking its suppliers to its retail stores. IT, eventually enabled WalMart to implement this strategy. An enterprise-wide information system was developed
that directly connected all retail locations, distribution warehouses, and major supplies.
2. The capabilities of IT to track information and break down geographic and organizational
barriers are useful in understanding the companys strengths and weaknesses, and market
structure and opportunities. Communication technology helps to overcome geographic
barriers and thus enable broader acceptance of the process change. At General Electric email systems are used to speed analysis and design sharing and to hold frequent virtual
meetings between group from different regions and overseas.
3. The focus is on finding different approaches to manage a process. These approaches can
be found and be adapted from practices of companies outside of the industry. The
organization should benchmark against other industries and combine it with the
experience and expertise of the team members to adopt an entirely new process
technology.
4. BPR requires a flexible organization design. The existing rigid infrastructure of the
organization must be altered to facilitate cooperation between various departments by
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Role of IT in BPR
using cross-functional teams instead of individuals working in isolated departments.
Flexible infrastructures adapt to changing external drivers. Therefore, the flexible
infrastructure includes processes for continuously evaluating existing tools to see what
should be removed, and continuously seeking user input about what works or does not.
5. To achieve effective teamwork, each worker should develop several competencies. The
IT organization is no exception. The demand for close collaboration with other functions
dictates the need for IT staff to broaden their portfolio of skills especially in nontechnical
issues such as marketing, customer relationships, etc. The combination of the Internet and
the Intranet services allows a collaborative team effort from around the globe.
6. Alliances and other methods of cross company coordination are becoming commonplace. In an attempt to gain market shares, many firms are teaming and collaborating with
suppliers and distributors.
Phase 2: while the process is being designed (as a facilitator)
This stage involves two activities: technical and social design. During the technical
phase, information is consolidated, alternatives are redefined, process linkages are re-examined,
and controls are relocated prior to applying technology. The social design focuses on human
aspects and involves employees who will affect corporate changes: defining jobs and teams,
defining skills and staffing needs, and designing incentives are considered carefully. This stage
also requires development of test and rollout plans. After the objectives are identified, the
existing processes are mapped, measured, analyzed, and benchmarked, and then are combined to
develop a new business process. Development of people, processes, and technology are
integrated.
During the process design, accountability for development, testing and implementation
must be clearly defined. Real benefits to the business result when IT becomes involved with
more fundamental changes to the business process itself. The crucial roles that IT plays in this
phase of BPR efforts are:

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Role of IT in BPR
1. IT can facilitate the reengineering design process through the use of project management
tools. These help identify, structure, and estimate BPR activities and help to control
contingencies that arise during the process. Project management tools along with
electronic communication; enable ongoing communication of the reengineering process
between users and facilitators.
2. Gathering and analyzing information about the performance and structure of a process is
an important step in identifying and selecting process for redesign. Mapping or flowcharting the existing process and then measuring the results in terms of cost, quality and
time are the most successful. IT can facilitate this step with the use of tools that provide
modelling and flow simulation, document business processes, analyze survey data, and
perform structuring evaluation. Technologies such as computer-aided systems
engineering (CASE) are designed primarily to draw process models. The ability to draw
models and make changes rapidly speeds redesign and facilitates the process of
process design. At Xerox, for example several divisions are moving directly from process
modelling to automated generation of computer code. They report high user satisfaction
and improved productivity with the resulting systems. In addition, IT is capable of storing
and retrieving unstructured, multimedia information that can be useful for developing
process prototypes. The maintenance and operating workers at Union Carbides plant in
Taft, Louisiana used flow-charting to redraw their old process and create new ones. The
results were a saving of more than US$ 20 million.
3. Computing technologies have facilitated a process- oriented approach to system
development where a database is shared in different functional units participating in the
same business process. Ford Motor Corporation, for example used databases in its
accounts payable process to cut down many intermediate steps and to overhaul a
sequential flow of paper documents among involved functions. As the project progressed,
the reengineering efforts achieved a 75% reduction in the workforce. In addition to
shared databases, imaging technology has facilitated a process-oriented approach because
in processing loan applications, for example the digitized image of an application can be
worked on by several employees directly.
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Role of IT in BPR
4. Telecommunication technologies such as LANs, groupware, etc. have improved
collaboration among personnel of different functional units in their efforts to accomplish
a common business process. At Texas Instruments, for example, the process for new
product development was dramatically improved when a design team in different
countries used global network to work on design directly without sequential flow of
documents. As a result, the development cycle time for various products decreased
substantially (more than 30% in some cases). At Ford, the process for new car design was
improved when computer-aided design (CAD) systems were utilized. Members of design
teams share a common design database across the Atlantic to exchange design ideas,
criticism, and opinions without meeting face to face.
5. Making data digital from the start can provide a whole range of positive results. When
figures are in electronic form, employees can look at them in any detail or in any view
they desire, can study them and pass them around for collaboration. For example, SevenEleven Japan used IT to not only improve inventory control, but to provide key
information to management and improve quality of sales information to make better
operation decision on a regional basis. In 1979, the company established an on-line
network and from there introduced the Electronic Point of Sale (EPoS) system in 1982.
At Hewlett-Packard Co., the sales process improved drastically as 135 sales
representatives were trained to use laptop to retrieve up-to-date inventory information
from the corporate database during the customer meetings. In addition, sales persons used
these laptops to communicate with their peers and superiors. As a result, time spent in
meeting decreased by 46%, travel time was cut by 13%, time spent with customers
increased by 27% and sales rose by 10%.
6. Input from employees and information on customer requirements is essential in
reengineering. IT applications allow organizations to build a data base to track customer
satisfaction, analyze complaints, and obtain employees feedback for ways to improve
customer satisfaction. At Frito Lay each of the 10,000 salespersons uses a handheld
computer to record sales data on 200 grocery products, reducing many clerical
procedures. The data is transmitted to a central computer, which in turn, sends
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Role of IT in BPR
instructions (such as changes in pricing, and product promotions) to all salespersons
through their hand-held computers. This process greatly enhances collaboration between
marketing and sales and also makes weekly summaries and analysis available to senior
managers.
7. IT capabilities are used for information exchange and to improve inner organizational
collaboration. For example R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. used EDI technology in
conjunction with varied technologies of electronic commerce such as document imaging
with electronic work queues to reengineer its accounts payable function.
8. IT can also be used to help identify alternative business processes. IT can help companies
to achieve multiple objectives in redesigning processes. Expert systems and technological
databases can provide information on current and future capabilities of technology,
human resources and organization change. American Express improved quality, cost, and
time of its credit authorization process with an Authorizers Assistant expert system.
The successful redesign led to 25% reduction in the average time for each authorization, a
30% reduction in improper credit denials and a 7 million annual reduction in costs due to
credit losses. IT makes it possible to develop much richer processes.

Phase 3: after the design is complete (as an implementer)

The bulk of the reengineering efforts lie in this phase. The reengineering efforts include
planning and managing people, processes, and technology and driving the implementation
toward the business vision. The objectives of this stage are to pilot test the new approach, to
monitor the results, and to provide extensive retraining of employees. As reengineering efforts
go forward it is important to define and redefine performance goals and objectives, maintain a
strong commitment to the vision, break the barriers between the departments, and be flexible as
the business environment changes. IT can facilitate the following processes in this phase:
1. Implementation of the new process through the use of project management and process
analysis tools. These help identify structure and estimate all associated activities. They
facilitate tracking and managing employees expectations against commitments.
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Role of IT in BPR
Contingencies and problems that arise during the implementation phase can be handled
and controlled.
2. Electronic communications enable ongoing and real time communication of the process
between users and facilitators. IT helps to overcome geographic barriers.
3. Evaluating the potential investments and returns of the reengineering efforts is absolutely
essential. The reengineering team or management should have enough information to
determine the value the new process contributes to the overall performance.
4. A fundamental source of difficulties is the fact that process are reengineered but
infrastructure is not. The rigid infrastructure of the organization must be altered to
facilitate cooperation and to cross-functional barriers between departments. Crossfunctional teams must replace individuals working in isolated departments. Recently,
there has been a significant growth in collaborative computing products. These range
from software for conducting meetings on-line to complex programs that enable a
number of users to collaborate in real time, sharing documents, managing projects and
handling different tasks. These include idea generation, brainstorming, group outlining,
voting, teleconference, meet-me-service, etc.
5. As other business divisions undergo reengineering process, IT organization should be
improved to meet their increasing needs. For example, in 1993 CIGNA implemented
reengineering of its 1000- person IT departmentCIGNA Technology Services (CTS).
The main reason was to meet the increasing needs of the business divisions. A team
based structure resulted, and the benefits included a major change in the philosophy of
the unit. Where the unit was previously technology focused, reengineering brought about
a focus on using technology to meet business strategies. Management style changed from
control-based and functional, to leadership-based and team-oriented. The hierarchy was
flattened, increasing flexibility.
6. Digital feedback loop makes it possible to have a specific definition of success, a
specific beginning and end in terms of time and tasks, intermediate milestone and finally
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Role of IT in BPR
a budget. IT is only useful if it helps employees do their work better and differently.
Organizations are not working with the employees in the organization to infuse
technology. Successful reengineering requires that companies first concentrate on crucial
business processes that effect competitive factors, customer service, cost reduction,
product quality and time-to-market. Obtaining greatest benefit from IT requires that
current processes not be simply automated or existing automation improved.

15

ROLE OF IT IN REENGINEERING
Business process reengineering (reengineering) is a pervasive but challenging tool for
transforming organizations for radical improvement in all aspects of its performance.
Information technology (IT) plays an important role by either enabling or constraining successful
implementation of Reengineering. The role of IT in reengineering is not automating the business
process. Companies that think of IT as the tool for automating its business process cannot
reengineer. IT can be an enabler for reengineering by enabling the organization to reengineer. IT
allows the organization to do business process more efficiently. IT can also become an inhibitor
of reengineering if the organization's IT Infrastructure is inadequate or inflexible. IT
infrastructure capability includes both the technical and managerial expertise required to provide
reliable physical services and extensive electronic connectivity within and outside the firm.
Information technology (IT) has historically played an important role in the reengineering
concept. It is considered by some as a major enabler for new forms of working and collaborating
within an organization and across organizational borders
Early BPR literature identified several so called disruptive technologies that were
supposed to challenge traditional wisdom about how work should be performed.

Shared databases, making information available at many places

Expert systems, allowing generalists to perform specialist tasks

Telecommunication networks, allowing organizations to be centralized and decentralized

at the same time

Decision-support tools, allowing decision-making to be a part of everybody's job

Wireless data communication and portable computers, allowing field personnel to work
office independent

Role of IT in BPR

Interactive videodisk, to get in immediate contact with potential buyers

Automatic identification and tracking, allowing things to tell where they are, instead of
requiring to be found

High performance computing, allowing on-the-fly planning and revisioning

In the mid 1990s, especially workflow management systems were considered as a

significant contributor to improved process efficiency. Also ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning)
vendors, such as SAP, JD Edwards, Oracle, PeopleSoft, positioned their solutions as vehicles for
business process redesign and improvement.

Principles of Reengineering by Hammer

Hammer (1990) considers information technology (IT) as the key enabler of BPR which
he considers as "radical change." He prescribes the use of IT to challenge the assumptions
inherent in the work processes that have existed since long before the advent of modern
computer and communications technology. He argues that at the heart of reengineering is the
notion of "discontinuous thinking -- or recognizing and breaking away from the outdated rules
and fundamental assumptions underlying operations. These rules of work design are based on
assumptions about technology, people, and organizational goals that no longer hold." He
suggests the following "principles of reengineering":
(a) Organize around outcomes, not tasks
(b) Have those who use the output of the process perform the process;
(c) Subsume information processing work into the real work that produces the
information;
(d)Treat geographically dispersed resources as though they were centralized;
(e) Link parallel activities instead of integrating their results;
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Role of IT in BPR
(f) Put the decision point where the work is performed, and build control into the
process;
(g) Capture information once and at the source.
The major advantage of IT in reengineering lies in its disruptive power. IT has the power
to break the rules and make people think inductively and give the company a competitive
advantage. The company that used the disruptive power of IT to break all rules and gain
competitive advantage was Amazon.com. Amazon.com broke the existing rules and sold books
without a physical presence for its customers, through Internet.
Amazon.com in doing so has completely changed the book store business and broke all
the rules. The key to the effective use of IT lies not in moving the information faster but in doing
right things with it. IT has to be used to make proactive decisions to improve business
performance rather than report on it after the fact. In the design phase of implementation of
reengineering the capabilities of IT can be used to simulate a model of the design and there by
validate the new design.
Building an effective IT infrastructure is a vital factor in successful BPR implementation.
An adequate understanding of technologies for redesigning business processes is necessary for
proper selection of IT platforms. Effective overall system architecture, flexible IT infrastructure
and proper installation of IT components all contribute to building an effective IT infrastructure
for business processes. The IT infrastructure and BPR are interdependent in the sense that
deciding the information requirements for the new business processes determines the IT
infrastructure. In addition, recognition of IT capabilities provides alternatives for BPR. Building
a responsive IT infrastructure is highly dependent on an appropriate determination of business
process information needs. This, in turn, is determined by the types of activities within a business
process, and the sequencing and reliance on other organizational processes. An effective IT
infrastructure follows a top-down approach, beginning with business strategy and IS strategy and
passing through designs of data, systems and computer architecture. Linkages between the IT
infrastructure components are important for ensuring integrity and consistency among the IT
infrastructure components. IT standards also have a major role in reconciling various
19

Role of IT in BPR
infrastructure components to provide shared IT services that are of a certain degree of
effectiveness to support business process applications. The IT infrastructure shared services and
the human IT infrastructure components, in terms of their responsibilities and their expertise, are
both vital to the process of the IT infrastructure composition.

One main objective of BPR is to use IT to support radical change. Some authors view IT
as the central implementation vehicle of BPR. However BPR has not really worked as its
proponents expected. Davenport and Short (1990) attribute this problem to a lack of
understanding of the deeper issues of IT. They claim that IT has traditionally been used to
increase the speed of work but not to transform it and BPR is about using IT to do things
differently. Therefore, IT plays an important role in BPR. Properly implementing IT can improve
the competitive position of organizations. But inappropriately implementing IT may create
barriers to responding to the rapidly changing business environment. Further, simply picking IT
packages cannot achieve successful BPR if it is simply used to speed up the process rather than
reengineer it. As Davenport (1993) contends:
Information and IT are rarely sufficient to bring about the process change; most process
innovations are enabled by a combination of IT, information and organizational/human resource
changes.
IT provides project management skills and experience, which is a key ingredient in
successfully implementing reengineering. The IT group of the company has experience in large
scale project as they are exposed to the structured demand of large scale projects. Reengineering
in a company is and should be undertaken as a project, this is the time when the project
management expertise of the IT group becomes a key ingredient in the success of reengineering.
IT can continuously reflect and reinforce bureaucratic and functional structures or IT can
help to create a leaner, flatter and more responsive organization. For example, IT tools that are
designed for functional hierarchies are primarily designed to support incremental improvements
and cannot achieve the radical change in BPR projects. While information systems provide fast
processing and response, they often fail to provide the flexibility for human communication,
which can lead to serious consequences. This means IT may sometimes have a negative impact
20

Role of IT in BPR
by merely automating the existing processes. However, it could also have a positive impact if it
is deployed correctly in conjunction with the organizations goals. IT is the enabler to reengineer
processes and is an important driving force for business transformation.
Although, BPR has its roots in IT management, it is primarily a business initiative that
has broad consequences in terms of satisfying the needs of customers and the firm's other
constituents. The IS group may need to play a behind-the scenes advocacy role, convincing
senior management of the power offered by IT and process redesign. It would also need to
incorporate the skills of process measurement, analysis, and redesign.

BPR The Current focus in IT

Apart from the usual ways of managing a process in any business information system, it
is necessary to enhance the value of the process and also the methods used in improving the
process. Some of the concepts of information management for effective information systems are
the traditional concept of database, the emerging concepts of data mining and data warehousing.

DATA BASE:
Database is a data structure used to store organized information. A database is typically
made up of many linked tables of rows and columns. For example, a company might use a
database to store information about their products, their employees, and financial information.
Databases are now also used in nearly all ecommerce sites to store product inventory and
customer information. Database software, such as Microsoft Access, FileMaker Pro, and MySQL
is designed to help companies and individuals organize large amounts of information in a way
where the data can be easily searched, sorted, and updated.

Data Mining:
Data mining is primarily used as a part of information system today, by companies with
strong consumer focus retail, financial, communication, and marketing organizations. It enables
these companies to determine relationships among internal factors such as price, product
positioning, or staff skills, and external factors such as economic indicators, competition, and
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Role of IT in BPR
customer demographics. And, it enables them to determine the impact on sales, customer
satisfaction, and corporate profits. Finally, it enables them to drill down into summary
information to view detail transactional data. With data mining, a retailer could use point of sale
records of customer purchases to send targeted promotions based on an individuals purchase
history. By mining demographic data from comment or warranty cards, the retailer could
develop products and promotions to appeal to specific customer segments.

Data Warehousing
A data warehouse is a copy of transaction data specifically structured for querying and
reporting. The main output from data warehouse systems are either tabular listings (queries) with
minimal formatting or highly formatted formal reports on business activities. This becomes a
convenient way to handle the information being generated by various processes. Data warehouse
is an archive of information collected from wide multiple sources, stored under a unified scheme,
at a single site. This data is stored for a long time permitting the user an access to archived data
for years. The data stored and the subsequent report generated out of a querying process enables
decision making quickly. This concept is useful for big companies having plenty of data on their
business processes. Big companies have bigger problems and complex problems. Decision
makers require access to information from all sources. Setting up queries on individual processes
may be tedious and inefficient. Data warehouse may be considered under such situations.

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Role of IT in BPR

STRATEGIC USES OF IT AND CRITICALITY OF IT

Companies may use information systems strategically, or may use them in defensive or
controlled ways. More and more businesses are beginning to use information systems
strategically for competitive advantage. The speed, information processing capabilities, and
connectivity of computers and Internet technologies can substantially increase the efficiency of
business processes, as well as communications and collaboration among the people responsible
for their operation and management.
IT can also be used in one of the most important area of knowledge management.
Knowledge management has become one of the major strategic uses of information technology.
Many companies are building knowledge management systems (KMS) to manage organizational
learning and business know-how. The goal of KMS is to help knowledge workers create,
organize, and make available important business knowledge, wherever and whenever its needed
in an organization. This includes processes, procedures, patterns, reference works, formulas,
best practices, forecasts, and fixes. Internet and Intranet web sites, groupware, data mining,
knowledge bases, discussion forums, and videoconferencing are some of the key information
technologies for gathering, storing, and distributing this knowledge.
For any business process the criticality of Information Technology has to be analysed.
Information systems can be used in business process reengineering when large software systems
grow old, when there are limitations in construction tools, when there are millions of lines of
code are to be maintained etc.

BPR TOOLS AND TECHNIQUES

Market competition is forcing firms to reconsider how they are organized to compete. As
a basis for change, they are exploring a variety of concepts, including Time-based Competition,
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Role of IT in BPR
Quality

Function

Deployment,

Activity-Based

Costing,

Quality

Circles,

Continuous

Improvement, Process Innovation, and Business Process Re-Engineering. Regrettably, most of

the concepts are descriptive, if not ad hoc, and lack a formal model which would enable their
consistent application across firms. Business process re-engineering is very much in the "guild"
mold of application; management consultants are the "masters" and they impart their knowledge
through "apprenticeship" to other consultants. The knowledge of business process re-engineering
has yet to be formalized and reduced to engineering practice.
This Part of our report deals with vision for BPR tools and also specifies criteria for the
valuation of these tools.

The Nature of IT Support for BPR

We can consider any software tool for BPR as having five aspects:

Integrated enterprise models

Analysis (problem-solving capability)

Software functionality

Visualization and Communication

Intended Users

These properties address two major themes:

What tasks do the tools perform?

What support do the tools require?

The following sections consider more detailed questions for each of these aspects of BPR

tools. We will then present some preliminary ideas for the nature of BPR tools for each stage in
the framework, and propose requirements for these tools.

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Role of IT in BPR

Integrated Enterprise Models

An enterprise model is a computational representation of the structure, processes,
information, resources, goals, and constraints of a business, government activity, or other
organizational system. It can be both definitional and descriptive, spanning what is and what
should be. The role of an enterprise model is to achieve model-driven enterprise design, analysis,
and operation.
Usually a second generation knowledge engineering" approach is used for constructing
the enterprise models. Rather than extracting rules from experts, they are "engineering
ontologies." An ontology is a formal description of entities and their properties, relationships,
constraints, behaviours. It provides a common terminology that captures key distinctions and is
generic across many domains.
The approach to engineering ontologies begins with defining ontologys requirements;
this is in the form of questions that ontology must be able to answer. It is called the competency
of the ontology. For any task in which the ontology is to be employed, the task imposes a set of
requirements on the ontology. These requirements can best be specified as a set of queries that
the ontology should be able to answer, if it contains the relevant information. The competency
questions are the basis for a rigorous characterization of the information that the ontology is able
to provide to the task. Competency questions are used to evaluate ontology in the sense that the
ontology must be necessary and sufficient to represent the tasks specified by the competency
questions and their solution. These are also the tasks for which the ontology finds all and only
the correct solutions. Tasks such as these can serve to drive the development of new ontologies
and also to justify and characterize the capabilities of existing ontologies.
An integrated enterprise model provides the language used to specify an explicit
definition of an enterprise. For reengineering, it is needed to explore alternative models in the
design of enterprises spanning organization structure and behaviour. In order to reason about
alternative designs for enterprises, it is necessary to explore different possible sets of constraints
for enterprises within the language. Some questions should be asked like-- can a process be

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Role of IT in BPR
performed in a different way, or can we achieve some goal in a different way? Can we relax the
constraints in the enterprise such that we can improve performance or achieve new goals?
A related problem is the use of benchmarking in the reengineering process. In
benchmarking, performance is compared between enterprise and then adopting processes and
practices from enterprises which are the best performers. However, not all practices can be
adopted from other enterprises; the key is to realize that to identify opportunities for
improvement by analyzing the successes and failures of similar enterprises. Herein lies the
problem -- what is a similar enterprise? What is compared among enterprises when we use
benchmarking? It is difficult to compare the goals and activities among enterprises unless all
constraints and assumptions about the enterprise and its environment are made explicit.
By representing the enterprise as a set of constraints using the ontologies, all of the above
questions can be considered as either constraint satisfaction or logical entailment problems in
first-order logic. All of the relationships among the different constraints within the enterprise are
therefore made explicit.
An enterprise is defined by the following set of constraints:

definitions of the activities performed by the enterprise.

constraints on resources required by activities performed in the enterprise.

constraints among organizational roles, positions, and agents within the enterprise. This
includes constraints on the behaviour of agents.

constraints defining the goals to be achieved by the enterprise.

constraints on products, including product design requirements, quality constraints, and

product standards.

Rather than manufacture and distribute products, many enterprises provide services to
their customers, and there is a requirement to model these enterprises within the
framework. This requires ontology for services, where a service is intuitively an activity
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Role of IT in BPR
performed by agents within the enterprise to either change the properties of some
resource (e.g. delivering packages, painting buildings, dry cleaning, repair) or to provide
information to customers. In this case, the definition of the enterprise must specify a set
of constraints on products and information that define the activities the enterprise
performs as services.

set of constraints on activities in the enterprise. This includes policies and performance
constraints, such as the following examples:

All deliveries must be made within 15 minutes of placing the order.

When an order is made, a copy is sent to the regional office.

set of constraints defining the external environment of the enterprise, dealing with
customers, markets, suppliers, and competitors. This also includes the definitions of the
activities performed by agents external to the enterprise (e.g. suppliers, subcontractors),
but whose effects are required by the activities within the enterprise.
Using this framework, it is possible to characterize classes of enterprises by sets of

assumptions over their processes, goals, and organization constraints.

Analysis
A necessary first step is the precise definition of the analysis tasks performed by different
tools in the environment and the ways in which they interact. This specification is independent of
the algorithms used to solve the tasks it is needed to specify the problem and what constitutes
a solution to the problem. In this way will define the functionality of each tool; this will require
the definition of what is the appropriate input to each tool and what is the correct output. The
specifications of these tasks for the tools will serve as competency questions for the different
ontologies that are being designed.
Each advisor is a constraint-based problem solver - given a set of goals and constraints, a
tool searches for a solution that optimizes the goals and satisfies the constraints. Tools also have

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Role of IT in BPR
the ability to generate more than one solution, thereby the enabling the consideration of
alternatives and trade-offs.
The tasks for each advisor fall into three main groups:

evaluation

analysis

guidance
Evaluation tasks are either decision tasks (does the enterprise model satisfy some set of

requirements, such as ISO 9003 compliance) or property evaluation of an enterprise model (what
is the cost associated with some set of activities). This requires the ability to compare two
different enterprise models along some dimension, such as cost or quality. In addition, the
distinction must be made between evaluation of the enterprise model (static set of activities) and
the evaluation of a plan or schedule at some point in time.
Analysis tasks involve prediction, monitoring, identification, and explanation with
respect to an enterprise model. Prediction is the determination of the value of some proposition at
points in the future. Monitoring is the determination of the value of some proposition after
executing some set of activities, and comparing this value to the predicted value. Identification is
the task of finding objects that satisfy certain properties in an enterprise model. Explanation is
the task of determining why a proposition has a certain value at some point in time; this requires
deciding what set of event occurred and what propositions hold that entail the value of the
proposition in question. For example, we may want to predict the cost associated with some set
of activities and then monitor and compare the cost of the execution of the scheduled activities.
We may want to know why a particular product has a given cost, or why the activity took so long
to complete; these tasks require some mechanism for explanation. Another analysis task may be
the identification of the resource bottlenecks within an enterprise model, or the anticipation of
resource conflicts.
The explanation tasks illustrate the relationship between evaluation and guidance for the
tools. If a particular enterprise model fails to satisfy some property, it is needed know why it
fails. This in turn suggests ways in which augment the enterprise model so that it does satisfy the
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Role of IT in BPR
property. For example, an enterprise may not be ISO 9003 compliant; the explanation task would
recommend that the appropriate quality control processes be included in order to satisfy
compliance.
Finally the guidance tasks for these tools, in which the tool suggests alternatives. The tool
must be able to represent and model the current status of a process and assess potential changes.
For static models, this requires the ability to generate different models. This is also related to the
evaluation tasks of the tools; if a process fails to satisfy certain requirements, the tool suggests
alternative models of the process which do satisfy the requirements. Comparing and evaluating
the different alternative futures and possibilities for the processes in an enterprise with respect to
the execution of plans and schedules requires a mechanism for hypothetical reasoning.

Software Functionality
These are the capabilities of the tools that are independent of the reasoning tasks required
for analysis. They deal with properties of the implemented ontologies and analysis tasks, and can
be roughly categorized as follows:

Tool integration environment

Enterprise model management tools

Enterprise model construction

Project management tools

Integration of Enterprise Models and Tools

A major theme in the BPR framework is the creation of an integrating environment for
different tools. Toolkits for spot solutions exist, but there is no consistency among tools. In order
to address the problem of integrating different BPR tools and the different enterprise models that
support the tools, any IT environment for BPR should use integrated enterprise models spanning
activities, resources, organization, goals, products, and services. These integrated enterprise
models would then serve as a common repository accessible by multiple tool sets.
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Role of IT in BPR
Further, these enterprise models must be extendible, allowing the incorporation of new
classes of constraints and the specialization of concepts and constraints for a particular
enterprise.
It is vital that the enterprise models and BPR tools used by different organizations within
the same enterprise be shareable and usable across these multiple organizations. Enterprise
models also provide representations that are reusable in other stages of BPR. Tools may be
defined with respect to a general class of enterprises or environments. To be useful, these tools
must be customizable, both to the class of problems and the class of users, whether they be
managers, consultants, or engineers.

Model Management
To address the problems of managing the different enterprise models to support the tools,
it is needed to provide synthesis of multiple views of the enterprise. The tools must provide
flexibility in information gathering, managing different kinds of data at different levels of
formality and representing the enterprise at different levels of abstraction.
In the construction of enterprise models, the tools must opportunistic in providing
information by tracking the information that is required at the appropriate time. The tools must
also be able to support partial models, and then combine these partial models into an integrated
model of the entire enterprise.

New ways of building models

Any environment that we design to support BPR must provide new ways of building
enterprise models, particularly in the acquisition and validation of an enterprise model. Such an
environment must therefore have the following properties:

The process of constructing an enterprise model must be interactive and dynamic.

An environment for enterprise model design must support storyboarding.

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Role of IT in BPR

Communication and Visualization

Communication
Tools to support BPR must facilitate communication of the properties of an enterprise
design or redesign. Minimally, there must be annotated enterprise models. We must also be able
to extract multiple pieces of the model in order to explain their interaction.
Ability to produce summaries of the intelligence gathered to support various types of
communicating and reporting but retaining linkages to the sources of data.
Visualization
Another aspect of BPR is that the customers (subjects of the BPR endeavour) are learning
about their enterprise through the process of modelling the enterprise. The BPR tools should
therefore support this learning process for the customers.
The first objective is the development of a symbology that depicts terms and concepts in
the associated enterprise models. The symbology should be precise and general enough to
support visual programming for performing the modelling task.
For those tasks that require multiple enterprise models, the primary issue will be the
design of graphical interfaces that capture the dimensionality of the interdependencies and the
possibility of merging the visualizations of the relevant models.

Intended Users
The BPR tool may vary with the kind of user -- external consultant, internal consultant,
manager, employee. The difference in the tool can include any of its properties, including the
analysis tasks, software functionality, and visualization.
There is also the following distinction in the kind of BPR endeavour which must be
reflected in the functionality of the tools:

Tools that support BPR as a single intervention in an enterprise.

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Role of IT in BPR

Tools that support BPR within an architectural framework for a process-oriented

enterprise, and which enable possible future BPR endeavours.
One issue that needs to be explored further is whether there are implementation

constraints that should be accepted in the tools. Related to this is the question of what technology
is available to different users, which may determine the functionality of the implemented tools.
Model acquisition may best be done using a notebook computer, while analysis of the model is
done using a more powerful workstation.

Evaluation Criteria
In this section we present a set of questions which can be used to evaluate BPR tools with
respect to the BPR framework.

Enterprise Models
1. How is a particular enterprise modelling language useful for supporting BPR at a
particular stage in the framework?
2. What requirements must the enterprise modelling language satisfy in order to support
BPR at some stage?
3. Identify the enterprise modelling language required to support the analysis tasks
identified for a particular stage of BPR.
4. Specify the terminology required to specify a particular stage of BPR. This means
defining the terms used in specifying that stage, as well as constraints on the meanings of
these terms.

Analysis
1. What kind of analysis is applicable at a particular stage of BPR, if any? Specify these
analysis tasks.
2. What enterprise models are required to support the analysis?
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Role of IT in BPR
3. How do the analysis tasks change with the intended users? In particular, consider the
following questions:
4. Are there different tasks for single intervention BPR endeavours as opposed to BPR
projects within a process-oriented enterprise?
5. Do managers require different analysis tasks than engineers or consultants?
6. What kind of analysis is being performed by the particular tool that we are evaluating?
This should be specified in terms of input and output.

Visualization
1. What needs to be visualized?
2. How is the necessary information being visualized?
3. How is the visualization related to the kind of analysis task?

Requirements for BPR Tools

Tools for this stage of BPR can be characterized primarily as enterprise model acquisition
tools. We first define the requirements for all tools supporting this stage, and then propose an
initial set of tools.

Enterprise Models
The enterprise models must provide definitions and constraints for the following terms:
enterprise, corporation, key process, vision, strategy, objective, goal, core competency,
enterprise performance criteria, process performance measures, environment, customer,
customer needs, expectations, requirements, market, opportunity, competitor capabilities,
sponsor, expected outcome of process, critical success factor for process, ownership of process
By using an enterprise modelling language, a normative model of the enterprise can be
constructed. This creates semantics for the enterprise and an extendable model that can later be
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Role of IT in BPR
refined, and which allows semantic transformations between different contexts. It can also create
a network of relationships, keep track of what is linked and to whom, and explore and navigate
through this network.
It is needed to integrate global and local views of the enterprise. In particular, there is a
need to provide structural frameworks for high-level understanding and integration:

Mapping organizational metrics (business model) to the process perspective (process

model).

Diagnostics for best practice (benchmarks). In this way, it is possible to drive out insights
for opportunities.
An enterprise model also provides us with mental modelling tools that assists participants

for communicating and coming to an agreement.

In using enterprise models, it is also needed to be aware of possible limitations for the
enterprise model used by tools at this stage. In particular, how do we handle fuzzy issues, such as
political culture?

Analysis
The primary analysis tasks for this stage are:

Determining the completeness of the set of constraints defining the enterprise.

Model integrity checking -- determining the consistency of the constraints.

Rationale for objectives and performance criteria -- have the linkages and dependencies
been made explicit?
Formal specifications of the competency questions for these analysis tasks must be

provided.

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Role of IT in BPR

Software Functionality
The essential capabilities required for model acquisition tools are concerned with the
construction and editing of the model for a specific enterprise.
There are also several aspects of this stage which require that we represent BPR as a
project (endeavour) within the enterprise. In this case, the tools must support the management of
the endeavour.

Integrated Environment for Tools

The tools should be able to maintain consistency among themselves and the enterprise
models, not necessarily uniformity. There may be the problem that the customer language is
different than the tool language. In this case, we must provide an environment that can represent
the different meanings for terms used by different people ("meaning mapper"). This also
involves identifying the relevant assumptions used by different people, tools, or enterprise
models. and the ability to capture multiple synonyms and utilize them in translation to various
audiences.
Tools must be portable, able to access existing information that is available in different
forms and correlate the output of different tools.

Model Acquisition
At this stage of BPR, the one of the primary tasks is the acquisition of the model for a
particular enterprise. Any tool must therefore specify how we gather enterprise models, as well
as provide some mechanism for a model repository.

Visualization
The challenge at this stage is to design the appropriate interface for model acquisition
tools. The relationships among goals, activities, and organizational roles are made explicit in the
enterprise model; these relationships must also be explicitly visualized in the tools through the
symbology of the associated enterprise models.
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Role of IT in BPR
There is also a requirement to represent the current enterprise in order to communicate
the problems and characteristics of the enterprise, as well as informally demonstrating that the
enterprise model is complete.

Intended Users
At the stage of setting the context for the BPR endeavour, it is essential to make the case
for moving forward with the BPR endeavour. Any tools must therefore be able to effectively
communicate the problems and any preliminary solutions.

Management
The necessary functionalities for tools to support management are similar to those for the
Operate stage of the BPR endeavour. Both must provide mechanisms for describing and
communicating to each affected employee any change requests, potential problems, and potential
solutions.
The tools must also define architecture for a process-oriented enterprise by providing a
repository for the following:

Standards for consistent descriptions of processes, process strategy and plans.

the framework of entities necessary for effective process management

linkages showing how each employee's job contributes to the building and delivery of
value to the enterprise's customers.

Human Resources
Enterprise Models
To characterize human resources, we must identify the essential properties of agents
within the enterprise. For example, we must represent the capacity of agents and behavioural
aspects of agents within the enterprise, such as motivation, culture, incentives, and adaptability.
We must also represent the constraints on the behaviour of people, such as policies and
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Role of IT in BPR
preferences and provide linkages from the process measurements to the organizational
incentives.

Software Functionality
Provide a simulation environment to support interactive training of change agents and
people affected by new changes.

Degrees of Automation
The analysis tasks (problem solving capability) of tools can be evaluated on a continuum
of the degree of automation in the tool and the interface between the user and the tool that is
considered as an assistant.
At one end of the continuum, there are tools which are simply visualizations of the
enterprise models that facilitate communication and provide insight into the enterprise and its
problems. By providing a mental model of the enterprise, the tool supports opportunity
identification as participants gain an understanding of how the enterprise succeeds or fails.
As we move along the continuum, we encounter BPR tools that provide analysis of a
given model through evaluation, identification, and monitoring of different properties of the
enterprise. In these different forms of analysis, we are considering alternative enterprise models,
which includes alternative plans or schedules for activities, alternative organizations, or
alternative sets of policies for people in the enterprise. We are also considering alternative
explanations for different properties of the enterprise, and alternative predictions for possibly
hypothetical behaviour of the enterprise.
Given this characterization of alternatives, the analysis tasks may simply compare
alternatives models/explanations/predictions in a given set produced by the user of the tool. This
is type of analysis performed by current simulation tools.

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Role of IT in BPR

IT ENABLERS OF BPR
Over the decades it has become evident that one of the most important ways to facilitate
effective organization redesign through process engineering in organizations is through the use
of information technology (IT) as an enabler of change. In fact, some have been willing to go
beyond that by saying that IT is not only a key enabler of change, but also an initiator and a
facilitator.
However, while IT played a significant role in changes in the nature of work
responsibilities in organizations, the results achieved over the years appear to be more often than
not to be slightly incremental and linear in nature. In other words the momentum of traditional
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Role of IT in BPR
business practices developed over the years overshadowed any ability of technology to shift
work methods in a different direction or onto another plane. While information technology did
indeed change work methods in terms of its nature, quality, speed and location that led to a
reduced need for human labor, multi decade lags between adoption and significant redesign
existed.
While inventions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries such as the telegraph and
telephone were well suited to expedite the business demands of the time, they did very little to
actually change business practices in an immediate way. However, after decades of the simplistic
use of the telephone, the insight of the concept of call/contact centers revolutionized elements of
the service industry into high growth, multi-billion dollar industries. Therefore, more was needed
than just innovation which was enabled by technology. What was needed and was seen to evolve
eventually was a philosophy that technology should be a supportive supplement to go along with
a drive to improve work processes and the overall system.
The full extent of world flatteners were only truly employed after there was an
emergence of managers, innovators, technology specialists and workers who were comfortable
with the horizontal collaboration and value creation processes developed by these new ideas and
technological advancements. Therefore, both ideas such as BPR and IT should work in tandem to
achieve desired radical redesigns of work processes and structure based on a comprehensive and
coherent strategy and goals. It is generally believed that change efforts should never be driven by
technological goals alone. While the idea to continually introduce technological advancements
that became essential elements in work methods was desirable because of their usefulness and
usability, the concept of BPR was seen as a way to more fully capitalize on them as enablers for
process innovation. For example, productivity that has been achieved from computers is really a
function of their combination with new business processes and new types of skills that go with
them versus the fact that they are readily available for various applications.

IT Drives BPR
In any organization worldwide, IT is the biggest enabler and driver of Business Process
Reengineering.
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Role of IT in BPR
Business Process Reengineering (BPR) aims at enhancing customer service by improving
productivity, eliminating waste and reducing the cost. The drive for BPR is to realize dramatic
improvements by fundamentally rethinking how an organizations work should be done instead
of mere process improvement that focus on functional or incremental improvement.
Reengineering involves radical improvements and not any incremental changes. In this
sense, reengineering without an IT support is nearly impossible. The evolution of IT provides
multiple options for process execution that were not possible erstwhile, which opened the
possibility of reengineering in the first place.
IT system helps in process automation, integration of multiple processes and ensures
consistency, thereby improving productivity and quality of the processes and reducing the cost.
IT is an enabler of process reengineering and not a substitute for it.
Role of IT in BPR is quite significant and continuous update on technology will help. IT
enabled BPR ensures achieving larger target, reducing the risk and providing measures in
sustaining results over a longer time. IT had a major role to play in BPR. The reason for that is
very simpleIT is perhaps the only department in any organization which has a holistic view of
the organization from a process perspectivefrom the perspective of what are the bottle necks,
choke points, etc. Few years back, IT used to provide support to the business, then it started
playing the role of an enabler, and now it drives the business. It is tough to think of BPR without
IT, as the contribution of IT in these processes is around 80%-90%. IT also helps to improve
business and enhance customer expectations. The need of IT, especially in todays slowdown
scenario, is more and thus there is more expectation from it.

IT in reference process reengineering

IT will have an increasing role to play with reference process reengineering. It is not a
one-time exercise, it needs to be done, say every three-four years, since different IT
developments provide new and disruptive options every few years.

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Role of IT in BPR
IT is the enabler of implementation of reengineered business processes; and in a few
cases IT could also be a driver. This is typically experienced during the deployment of new
technology solutions. Business processes can be reengineered without IT support and this is true
for processes which do not currently depend on IT for their outcomes. In the case of Shoppers
Stop, IT has been the key driver of some of the reengineering projects even though the
reengineered processes did not always have IT dependencies.

Role of CIOs in Process Reengineering

The function of IT in any business needs to be externally oriented. The CIO needs to
continuously keep a tab on new developments in the arena of IT. They need to have a thorough
knowledge of the business wherein they can map the new IT developments to the current and
future opportunities for executing business processes in a new, more efficient manner.
As IT has a holistic view of the organization, the CIO can do the homework and present
to business managers an analysis of processes and give his views on possible areas which are
candidates for BPR.
While IT is an enabler in BPR and most of the BPR in todays time would involve IT, it
should be kept in mind that BPR is done from business process perspective and not IT. In simple
terms, CIOs need to understand the business challenges, put themselves in shoes of business
managers, and then discuss what changes should be done.
A CIOs role can be effective in all stages, viz. planning stage, execution stage,
realization stage and continuous improvement stage. For example, a CIO can contribute in the
decision of choosing appropriate technology, implementation, flow of information system for
effective deployment, project management and so on. CIOs can also take the lead towards
facilitating BPR exercises within their enterprise as they have visibility across all functions and
interdependencies. Since most IT organizations are typically not aligned to any specific function
and thereby seen as politically agnostic, they are in an advantageous position to seize this
opportunity. CIOs need to have in-depth knowledge about various departments, communities and
even industries. They should adopt the best practices and solutions that have relevance to their
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Role of IT in BPR
business, as the adoption of IT depends on the nature of the business and vary from one
organization to another.
CIOs need to involve key business leaders into IT so that the ideas for reengineering
emerge out of a well aligned exercise between the business and IT. An IT mind is typically
operations oriented one wherein the tendency may be to follow the conventional path most of
the times. IT leadership should consciously attempt to come out of it. A CIO also needs to
facilitate setting up a cross functional team to carry-out inter-dependant collaborative exercise to
generate ideas of process reengineering.
Every BPR project should have clear cut target and recourses for effective
implementation. In todays times when IT is all pervasive and entrenched in all processes in any
organization, it is almost impossible to reengineer without support of IT.

FUTURE ROLE OF IT IN BPR

With IT advancing at a rapid pace every day the future role of IT in reengineering
becomes more critical. In the survey conducted by Prosci Research and Publishing Company
among CEOs of 205 companies across the globe. The future role of IT has been identified into
three main categories.
1. Participate as a member of the reengineering team, but do not take control of the project
2. Define technology solutions to enable new business processes and take time to educate
operational managers about new technology.
3. Implement technology needed to support the new business processes. Be sure to set
expectations and define deliverables clearly
IT managers and staff have to become business analysts, knowledgeable of business
needs and able to combine a business orientation with technical expertise. This will help in
integrating business knowledge with technical skills.

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Role of IT in BPR
With the advent of Internet and e-commerce, businesses are getting closer to the
customers. In future Internet will change the way business is carried out. E-commerce will affect
reengineering more than present day IT. E-commerce initiatives will be business led activities
with an implicit acceptance of process change and often involving the use of high-energy change
initiatives like reengineering.

CONCLUSION
It is not possible to reengineer without IT support. IT is not only an enabler for
reengineering it has also become an essential and integral part of all reengineering efforts. In the
implementation of reengineering IT is crucial and it provides the skills and tools that are needed
to effectively reengineer.
1. IT provides project management skills that are important in the successful
implementation of reengineering as a project.
2. In the design phase of implementation of reengineering the capabilities of IT can be used
to simulate a model of the design and there by validate the new design.
3. The disruptive power of IT helps in the design phase of implementation of reengineering.
The disruptive power helps organizations to break all the rules and think inductively
about the business that they are in to gain competitive advantage.
4. If not used properly IT can become an inhibitor of reengineering if the organizations IT
Infrastructure capabilities are inadequate or inflexible.
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Role of IT in BPR
5. IT capabilities of the organization should not directly influence the IT solutions that are
needed for the company.
6. IT is an indispensable tool in implementation of reengineering in the way that IT supports
redesigned business process and facilitates cross-functional workflow.

Companies have to understand that the role of IT in reengineering is not to automate the
business process.

In future companies will not be able to reengineer without involving IT department of the
company. The staff of the IT department will become the members of the reengineering team.

REFERENCES
http://www.expresscomputeronline.com/20090406/management01.shtml
http://www.springerlink.com/index/W290659N0L600875.pdf
http://www.eil.utoronto.ca/grpdoc/bprtool.html
www.emeraldinsight.com/journals.htm?articleid=1746936&show=pdf
http://www.anterron.com/cgi-bin/white_papers/docs/Role_of_IT_in_BPR.pdf
http://jobfunctions.bnet.com/abstract.aspx?docid=165413

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