In business process redesign, vital business processes are overhauled to achieve specific goals such as increased return on investment, service improvements, or cost reduction. Any business process, be it production, sales, or financial management workflows can be reworked to achieve the desired goal or goals. Often, re-engineering one process will have a knock-on effect on other processes within the business.
There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all. Peter Drucker
Where Does the Term Come From?
BPR was pioneered in the 1990s following the publication of a book titled “Reengineering work: Don’t Automate, Obliterate.” Author Michael Hammer was a former professor of computer science at MIT, and in his controversial work, he implied that managers had been focusing on the wrong issues, automating processes that should be obliterated since it failed to add value.
Hammer felt that instead of adapting technology to existing work processes, business leaders should be adapting work processes to match technology, shedding obsolete tasks along the way. The deciding factor, he said, was that work performed in an organization should add value, and if it didn’t add value, then it should be eliminated entirely.
The concept implies a fundamental review of processes and workflows. Logical as it may sound, the concept had its critics, but it became extremely popular, with up to 60 percent of Fortune 500 companies adopting business process redesign by the mid-1990s.
The big idea behind BPR is that interlinked work processes contribute to specific outcomes and that each process should contribute not only to those outcomes but serve the overall objectives of the business itself.
You might have heard of business process redesign under several other names, such as business process reengineering, business process change management, or business process transformation.
How is Business Process Redesign Achieved?
Business process redesign or reengineering is more than just a matter of improving what is already there. It implies some form of radical change. Oftentimes, companies will gather a project team and redesign the organization, its mission, strategic goals, assumptions, and processes from scratch, often with the help of specialized external process consultants. They may be seeking ways to:
- Increase productivity
- Reduce cycle times
- Improve product quality
- Achieve more efficient client service
- Implement new technologies
- Restructure and streamline teams
Thus, business process redesign is distinguished from other forms of change by being a radical intervention.
In its purest form, the process begins with the basics: what is the organization there for, what does it hope to achieve, and who will it help. Although this may sound almost superfluous, many businesses find that they have been laboring under mistaken assumptions. Once the “What should we be doing?” question is answered, it’s time to look at the methods to be implemented to achieve that.
Business processes are put under the microscope. What steps are performed to complete each process that is needed to create a final product or service offering? Even the finest details are recorded and analyzed. Each activity is measured, modeled, and then improved. Entire business processes may be redesigned from the ground up or even discarded altogether as not adding value to either the company or its clients.
Not Just “Set up and Go”
One thing is certain, significant change is never easy for organizations. It’s not the type of situation where a few people get together, make the necessary changes and then run with them forever afterward. After all, new processes may be flawed. Thus, business process redesign follows a cycle that is repeated until the desired result is achieved.
The phases of this cycle are:
- Identification of processes
- Review, update, and analysis
- Business Process Design
- Testing and implementation
Business process redesign hasn’t always been successful. After the failure of several attempts drew attention to this, the factors required for BPR success were identified as:
- The correct composition of BPR teams
- Accurate business needs analysis
- Strong IT infrastructure
- Active change management initiatives
- Efforts towards ongoing improvement
- Organization-wide commitment to the process
Common reasons for BPR failure were identified as:
- Optimizing a department to the detriment of another department
- Lack of time to maintain the business process improvement focus
- Failure to recognize the extent of problems
- Insufficient skill
- Poor implementation of information technology tools
- Lack of the necessary infrastructure to implement change
- Resistance to change on the part of managers and employees
- Low motivation to implement change
Information Technology Plays a Leading Role in BPR
Considering that a computer science professor was the originator of business process redesign, it’s hardly surprising that information technology plays a leading role in its implementation. Back in the nineties, business thought leaders began to refer to disruptive technologies that alter the way we do work. These include:
- Databases with shared access
- Systems that allow ordinary people to perform specialized work
- The rise of the mobile phone, allowing businesses to be centralized in terms of authority without having a centralized team to get work done.
- Support tools that facilitate decision-making across organizations.
- Compact laptops that act as “offices” for workers no matter where they are.
- Automated identification and tracking of information that allows records to show where to find information instead of having to hunt for it.
Of course, there has been considerable progress since then. Today, the mobile phone can do anything a 1990s laptop would have done, and cloud computing has made information available – worldwide if need be.
Business Process Redesign Critiques
With businesses happily divesting large chunks of work that failed to add value, the process became synonymous with downsizing and a business culture that doesn’t put its people first. Certain businesses thought leaders criticized BPR because:
- Ineffective processes are not always the cause of poor organizational performance.
- The “clean slate” approach has been widely criticized as discarding elements that work well without due consideration.
- Some argue that the business should focus on constraints rather than be engineered in its entirety.
Yet others simply say that BPR is nothing new and is simply a buzzword for something that has been done for decades. For instance, when Henry Ford first automated production lines, this was essentially business process redesign.
BPR specialists say that the biggest error that businesses applying BPR processes make is to overlook the human element. It is the human element, they say, that makes a business really work, and employers should keep this in mind when implementing BPR.
Tallyfy as a Valuable Tool in BPR
Since Tallyfy provides a platform for setting up, implementing and monitoring business processes, it is a useful tool for businesses engaged in business process redesign. Apart from being able to lay out new business process flows, Tallyfy provides real-time monitoring, making testing and implementation responsive and effective.
If you’re considering BPR or simply want to improve existing processes, Tallyfy provides the analytics you need to determine where problem areas still exist, allowing for targeted rectification of any bottlenecks, problems or inefficiencies that still exists in process flows.
Related Questions
What is redesign of the business processes?
Business process redesign is your chance to give your organization a little internal facelift. It’s about rethinking and reshaping the way things get done where you work. Think of your business like a busy kitchen – process redesign is reorganizing the layout, freshening the recipes and introducing new cooking methods to ensure everything works more effectively and is tastier.
What business process redesign involves?
Business process redesign takes a profound examination of your company at work. It’s like being an investigator, looking into every step of how work moves through your organization. This consists of mapping out current types and examining choke points while brainstorming for creative solutions. This is not about small adjustments; it is about a complete re-imagining of how work gets done, often using technology, to leap to greater efficiency and impact.
What are the types of business process redesign?
There are many varieties of business process redesign, with each having a particular sauce it believes in. There’s incremental redesign, which is akin to engine tuning — one small continuous improvement after another. Then there’s radical redesign, which is more like replacing the whole engine with a new model. Another kind of innovation is process innovation, where you’re creating all new ways of doing things. Finally, benchmarking redesign is when you study what is the best that others in your industry are using and complete what those best practices would be for your needs.
What is the main objective of business process redesign?
The standard aim of business process redesign is to significantly boost your organisation. This is similar to how we train for a marathon – we want to run faster, longer and easier. It means reducing expenses, enhancing quality, improving delivery times and making customers happier. In short, you need to build a lean, mean, business machine to outperform the competition and be nimble enough to react to the latest trends.
What are the principles of business process redesign?
Business Process Redesign principles are the secret ingredients to the master chef’s special recipe. These include embracing outcome over task, questioning assumptions, thinking outside the box, and being the customer’s advocate. It is all about the simplification of complex processes, removing unhelpful steps, and using technology to automate and improve operations. Empower employees to act, make decisions and take ownership of the work.
What is the difference between process redesign and process improvement?
Process improvement is like a tune-up to your car, but process redesign is like trading in your old clunker for a shiny, new model. Process improvement is all about getting existing processes to work better, usually by making small, incremental changes. Engaging in redesign, on the other hand, is a more profound reconsideration of how work gets done. It is questioning whether the current way even matters and these drastically different ways result in better results.
What is the difference between business process redesign and reengineering?
Business process redesign and reengineering are cousins of a sort – related, but not the same. The difference between redesign and redesigning is that redesign can mean changes made only during a design phase— which is not as drastic as changing everything from scratch like redesigning. But reengineering is the nuclear option: it requires a total reset of the way work gets done. Reengineering is more radical, more risky, and will tend to be more disruptive of the organization. Consider redesign as remodeling your home, reengineering as demolishing it and constructing a new one.
How does business process redesign work?
Business process redesign is about a home renovation project. You start with the current state — mapping existing processes and identifying pain points. Then you dream big, which is imagining perfect future scenarios, unfettered. Now the creative piece — national committees develop new ideas and how we can use technology to move from current to ideal. Then, you take the new design, navigate the change process to bring the new design to life, and track the results to sustain the change. It’s reiterative, usually needing tweaks and changes throughout.
When should you consider process redesign?
When Make sure You Need Process Redesign So, when you feel like your business is running on a treadmill — so much effort exerted, but no distance travelled. Indicators that a redesign may have become overdue include falling performance, dissatisfied customers, exasperated employees or trailing rivals. New technologies that could completely alter your ways of doing business — such as the rise of computers, the internet, and mobile devices — should also be taken into account. Keep in mind that if these companies soon need to redesign their business processes, then the same can happen to your business, even if it is not in a need of process redesign yet.
