Business Process Reengineering (BPR) in ERP
Preface
Business Process Reengineering (BPR) is the process of unnaturally changing the way a business operates to achieve significant advancements in performance. When enforced in confluence with an Enterprise Resource Planning( ERP) system, BPR can help an association streamline its operations, ameliorate effectiveness, and reduce costs.
The thing of BPR in an ERP environment is to align the association’s business processes with the capabilities of the ERP system to maximize the system’s implicit and achieve the asked business issues. This can involve redesigning or automating processes, barring gratuitous way, and making better use of technology and data to ameliorate decision- timber.
BPR can be a complex and time- consuming process, but it can eventually lead to significant advancements in the way an association operates.
The Business Process Re-engineering (BPR) is defined as: The fundamental rethinking and radical redesign of an enterprise’s business processes, from the customer’s perspective, to achieve considerable improvements in business performance.
Let’s assume ABC is a large organization owned by one of the state government in India.
Role of ABC
ABC is mainly engaged in:
Site selection and acquisition of land
Developing infrastructure for industrial area
Financial assistance to small, medium and large-scale projects
Equity participation in large projects on merit
Technical consultancy for project identification and technical tie up
Escort services
Facilitation of government clearances, merchant banking and financial tie –ups
Extending incentives and concessions as per the policy of the State Government.
As ABC strives to achieve their charge and give better service to their guests, they need to acclimatize to a future or asked state. Business Process Re-engineering (BPR) would give ABC with the capability to effectively change the internal processes to meet the future requirements of that ABC’s charge and strategy.
Now, let us assume XYZ is a IT Company planning to undertake BPR project for ABC. As a Total Service Provider and handling complex government turn-key IT projects, what approach XYZ should take!
Surely XYZ would consider following minimum factors on ABC’s part in undertaking a successful BPR project:
Visible active leadership
Clearly articulated vision to the enterprise
Sense of urgency
Process focus
Customer focus
Focus on all components of business systems
Cross functional participation
Best and brightest as team members
Leverage technology and human potential
Some early positive results
Continual Communication
As it is very difficult to manage the change in any government organization, XYZ could plan to follow dual approach depending on strategic business process of BPR or alternatively gradual continuous improvement depicted below:
The hardest part of any BPR effort is “living through the change” — getting people to let go of their old ways and embrace new ones. Re-engineering changes all aspects of a business. When a process changes, by necessity, so do the jobs of the people who work in that process. In addition, people’s styles, the ways in which they think and behave, and their orientation, what they believe is important about their work must also be realigned to fit the new process.
It should come as no surprise that, with this magnitude of change on the horizon, people regard the transition from the old process to the new with much anxiety. The number one source of difficulties with companies struggling to implement BPR is in the area of coping with the reactions of the people in the organization to the enormity of the change. This is referred to as “resistance to change.” Resistance to change need not be overwhelming or intimidating. XYZ along with ABC would try to understand the root causes of the phenomenon and follow a simple set of principles and techniques for dealing with it, then avoid derailment of BPR effort.
Even though there is no single way for dealing with resistance to change, there is a standard repertoire of techniques will be used in addressing it. Some examples may be:
Provide Incentives (positive and negative)
Supply people with information
Deal with people one on one
Make change seem inevitable
Make people part of the effort
Managing the resistance to change should be incorporated in each phase of the BPR.
Targeting the Processes for BPR
To select the appropriate process to be reengineered, one must first know what the processes are. The process to be reengineered should be one of the core processes of the enterprise. The enterprise will have 6–8 cross functional core processes that drive its business.
To select the process to be reengineered, the senior management team should evaluate each of the agencies/governments core processes against a standard set of questions.
Examples of the type of questions used during an evaluation would be:
Significant impact on agencies strategic direction?
High impact on customer satisfaction?
Process performance below best-in-class standard?
Government unable to gain more from process without Re-engineering?
Antiquated?
Susceptible to successful redesign?
Understand Phase
Think of the Understand Phase as taking an aerial view of the process to be reengineered. The team needs to take a high-level view of the process to discover what is going on so that they can spot opportunities for redesign.
Typically, four to six weeks is enough time to achieve the level of understanding necessary for Re-engineering.
Before the team can create a new design for the process, they do need to understand the current process. They must learn what the process does, how it performs, and why it does not perform better. All the data collected, and assessments done in the Understand Phase will lead to the development of the primary output of this phase — namely, the As Is Model.
As the As Is Model is being created, targets for redesign are identified, assumptions about the current process are surfaced, and quick hits are identified and implemented.
Innovate Phase (To Be)
The purpose of the Innovate Phase is to specify the technical dimension of the new process. The primary activity of this phase is developing the To Be Model, a clear description of the technology, standards, procedures, systems, and controls employed by the reengineered process.
To establish the future state of the process, the assumptions of the current process (surfaced during the Understand Phase) will be reviewed, challenged, and changed in the Innovate Phase.
The value of the Innovate Phase is Re-engineering of the process to better meet the objectives of the organization and the BPR. The Innovate Phase begins with the understanding from the previous two phases (targeting and understand) and takes the organization from its current practices into the future.
Implement Phase
In the Implement Phase, the focus is on developing and implementing plans to transform the organization from its current state to the future state, defined in the To Be Model.
These plans should enable the piloting and refinement of the To Be Model, prior to its implementation company wide.
This phase’s challenge is to bring everything together and institutionalize the reengineered process throughout the affected areas of the enterprise. The Implement Phase is where the new process faces the ultimate test of managing change. It is also where managing change becomes everyone’s job.
Each business process of ABC would be studied by XYZ’s BPR team consisting of domain expert and business analyst along with ABC’s core business team based on above methodology.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Business Process Reengineering (BPR) is a important tool for associations looking to ameliorate their performance and streamline their operations. When enforced in confluence with an Enterprise Resource Planning( ERP) system, BPR can help an association align its business processes with the capabilities of the ERP system to maximize the system’s eventuality and achieve asked business issues.
The thing of BPR in an ERP environment is to optimize the association’s processes, ameliorate effectiveness, and reduce costs. still, BPR can be a complex and time- consuming process, and associations must be prepared to invest the necessary coffers to insure a successful perpetration. But, if done rightly, the trouble put into BPR can lead to significant advancements in the way an association operates and eventually achieve the asked business results.