Week 6: How IT affects BPR?

It is realised that the position of IT on the BPR project has been different from before. Its role is being an enabler since it allows organisations to redesign the business processes. IT capabilities support and automate the processes in an efficient and effective way so as to enable the value to achieve the business strategy, rather than for a drastic rise in the revenue only.

For example, most organisations handle the typical works with software systems such as ordering fulfilments process and even creating documentation reports. Staff stores the data or files into the shared database or the server. The centralisation is so that other colleagues can easy access. It directly reduces delays in activities between each other since information sharing and instants feedbacks possible. Hence, the role of IT is crucial on the BPR project because it would contribute to the communication between different processes.

Here is one real example [1] of Hong Kong Housing Authority (HA) could be demonstrated how IT coordinates the business processes.

The Interactive Voice Response System (IVRS), call centre and IT sub-division helpdesk hotline of HA was challenged and unsatisfied because of its poor customer service, such as overload call centre, the system not respond to the callers’ enquiries as quickly as possible, easy loss of caller information and unrecorded talk time, shortage of support service for customers, and old FAQ and manuals, etc. HA therefore appointed an outsourcing company, EPRO, which supports to reengineer the business processes about the calling service. 

EPRO integrated IVRS, call centre, and helpdesk into a single platform. The new system with the shared database which provides voice guidance in terms of the pre-defined call flow, so that the callers can easy access to different enquiry information, and also take corresponding actions by step-to-step. The support service of complaints and enquiries handling has got largely improved. Besides, the new system closely follows complaints and enquiries cases, and then HA staffs would answer back to the caller as soon as possible while it always updates the status. The response time of the process can shorten. It can be proved that not only does IT facilitate the business processes, also improves the service level and customer satisfaction. 

The above diagram, The Leavitt Diamond, describes that the four components are interacted with each other included information technology use, organizational form, requisite people skills, and business processes. The other three must be changed at the same time while one is changed. Again, use the case study of HA [1], it was decided that the business processes needed to be redesigned due to poor service support and low customer satisfaction. Then, EPRO deployed the new technology, WISE-xb IVRS, to improve processes. It is sure that new people skills is necessary, so organisational form may be changed. This shows the principle of The Leavitt Diamond. In my view, it must be therefore easier to understand and handle since the complex function is broken down into four smaller one. Hence, it explains why that organisation in the paper [2] (Delvin Grant and Erhan Mergen, 1996) also adopted this framework for reducing the product cycle time. 

Last but not least, BPR is a radical one-time redesign and drastic improvement, mostly with IT. Due to its one-time approach, after a BPR project finishes, the organisation usually expects to get feedbacks what need to be follow up or continuous improvement for the quality. Hence, most organisations employ Total Quality Management (TQM) which is incremental and continuous improvement with minor IT to measure the performance and the quality after the BPR project. The below diagram describes why TQM and BPR share a cross-functional relationship.

REFERENCES: 

[1] EPRO Telecom Case Studies: Hong Kong Housing Authority Contact Centre Outsourcing Services, 2003, Available at: http://www.eprotel.com.hk/en/our_client-case_studies-detail_1a.php
[2] Applying Quality to Leavitt’s Framework to Solve Information Technology Problems: A Case Study, Delvin Grant and Erhan Mergen, 1996, Available at: http://www.emeraldinsight.com/journals.htm?articleid=883459&show=html