What is Business Process Reengineering (BPR)?
- Business process re-engineering is the analysis and design of workflows and processes within an organization. According to Davenport (1990) a business process is a set of logically related tasks performed to achieve a defined business outcome. Re-engineering is the basis for many recent developments in management.
- Business process re-engineering is also known as business process redesign, business transformation, or business process change management.
- Process Design encompasses both the identification of existing processes and the design of "to-be" processes. Areas of focus include representation of the process flow, the factors within it, alerts & notifications, escalations, Standard Operating Procedures, Service Level Agreements, and task hand-over mechanisms.
Why do companies need BPR?
The role of information technology
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 technologies that were supposed to challenge traditional wisdom about how work should be performed.
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Shared databases, making information available at many places
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Expert systems, allowing generalists to perform specialist tasks
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Telecommunication networks, allowing organizations to be centralized and decentralized at the same time
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Decision-support tools, allowing decision-making to be a part of everybody's job
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Wireless data communication and portable computers, allowing field personnel to work office independent
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Interactive videodisk, to get in immediate contact with potential buyers
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Automatic identification and tracking, allowing things to tell where they are, instead of requiring to be found
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High performance computing, allowing on-the-fly planning and revisioning.