Week 8: Process Redesign (1)

Recall of BPR Methodologies of Last Class

BPR is expected to rethink and redesign the processes from the groundwork and to reach a noticeable improvement of work. But it cannot be promised success in each BPR project, due to possibly improper implementation or lack of leadership. Thus, it could be understood for the importance of BPR Methodologies in my idea enable and guide the implementation of reengineering processes undertaken on an organized manner and decrease the possibility of the failure on the BPR projects.

To recall BPR Methodologies in the last lecture (Lecture 7), there are five phrases involved including Triggering and Executive Visioning, BPR Project Mobilisation, Process Redesign, Implementation and Organisational Transformation, and Monitoring and Maintaining.

Process Redesign of Phrase 3

This lecture mainly describes and analyses the phrase 3, Process Redesign in BPR Methodologies as follows.

Process Redesign consists of five steps including Scoping, Modeling, Analysis, Redesign, and Integration. In this lecture, it concentrated to describe and analyze such activities on scoping the process with the case study of Palorna Bank:

• Operationalize process performance targets;
• Define process boundaries;
• Identify key process issues;
• Understand best practices and define initial visions;
• Familiarize participants with BPR software; and
• Outline data collection plan and collect baseline data

Operationalize process performance targets

In my opinion, the organisations MUST define, list and prioritize goals because NOT all process redesign goals have the equivalent value. Says, some are more important, and some others are less important correspondingly. For example, a service-centric organization prefers reducing the processing time of customer requests than improving quality of other aspects. It is a usual situation under the resource constraints. Therefore, besides prioritizing goals, process performance targets and major resource constraints have to be clearly illustrated.

Define process boundaries

This activity directs the BPR team where and what the data can be collected, hence the BPR team understands and answers who customers of the process are, what process triggers and deliverables are, what external partners are, and what are sub-processes as the example of this lecture note.

Identify key process issue

Afterwards, the organisations identify what key process issues are from customers, suppliers, service provides, employees, etc., and assess, categorize and then condense key process issues in a summary list.

Understand best practices and define initial visions

The activity undertaken is as crucial as operationalizing process performance targets. In case the BPR team reviews successful cases of redesign process of other organisations, the BPR team can learn a lesson from reengineering practices that knows what and how should do. It helps to shape the initial vision and image of the reengineered process.

Familiarize participants with BPR software

In addition to participants need to train their application skills on the BPR software, so as to further each participant familiars with the BPR software on the new process. 

Outline data collection plan and collect baseline data

Last but not least, the BPR team should have a data collection plan including identifying key informants of data, data types, data collection methods, and so on. Despite of its difficulties in the data collection, it is well prepared for the modeling phase if baseline data collected. Hence, it can be acted as a pre-activity for the next phrase upon my view.

Paper Review

The paper (Tamrin, Minah, Jonathon, and Mohd Yuszreen 2010) describes and proves what necessity is in redesign process through the case study of Labuan Fire and Rescue Department (LFRD). LFRD could not record the inventory data systematically due to lack of a systematics inventory management system. This resulted to data missing or redundant. As the result, LFRD decided to redesign its inventory process which manages its inventories with e-inventory management system.

Not BPR team of LFRD only listed and prioritized goals, identified some particular of work activities, and the related resources and familiarized the new system, but also produced a deliverable with increasing speed of activity, human error reduction, and cost reduction. However, writers told that LFRD BPR project cannot be considered to success.

Comment: According to learnt from this lecture, I totally agree upon this statement because key process issues did not been identified by LFRD in its BPR project. It cannot be said that missed one of such necessary activities in the process redesign. Therefore, the example illustrates all activities have to be performed on scoping the process from the paper, also give me a learning experience and advanced understanding of the topic from the practice.

Source/Reference:

[1] “Redesigning Enterprise Processes for e-Business: Scoping An Enterprise Process” by El Sawy, Omar A. 2001 URL: http://zonecours.hec.ca/documents/H2011-P6-2647625.El-SawyChapter4.pdf

[2] "Business Process Reengineering in Labuan Fire Services Operations: A Case Study" by Tamrin, A., Minah, J., Jonathon, L., and Mohd Yuszreen, Y. 2010
URL: http://wwwkal.ums.edu.my/ljms/2010/LJMS_vol4_2010_14-25[2].pdf