Weeks 9 2007 IS33 BPR/BPM 1

COMP3470 IS33 People-Centred Information Systems Development

Week 9: Domain: Business Process Re-engineering

(or nowadays - BPM)

School of ComputingFACULTY OF Engineering

IS33 BPR/BPM 2Weeks 9 2007

Background Two seminal papers on BPR were published

in 1990 by Hammer and by Davenport & Short respectively which sparked off an increased amount of interests in its concept, especially in the Western business world. Hammer M, "Re-engineering Work: Don't

Automate, Obliterate", Harvard Business Review, Vol. 90, No. 4 July/Aug, 1990, pp104-12

Davenport TH & Short JE, " The New Industrial Engineering: Information Technology and Business Process Redesign", Sloan Management Review, Vo.l 31, No. 4, Summer, 1990, pp11-27

IS33 BPR/BPM 3Weeks 9 2007

What is BPR BPR is ultimately about rethinking the core of the

business. It was argued that the traditional functional view of an

organisation only looks at the responsibility and reporting relationships and offers little scope to measure or improve. Whereas processes have cost, time, output quality, and customer satisfaction and can offer clearer targets for measurement and improvement.

BPR is …"The fundamental rethinking and radical redesign of business processes to achieve dramatic improvements in critical, contemporary measures of performance, such as cost, quality, service and speed"

(Hammer and Champy 1993)IT usually played an important role.

IS33 BPR/BPM 4Weeks 9 2007

A bit more to BPR than processes… Andrews and Stalick (1994) suggested that

there are nine dimensions to business re-engineering. This is their model:

processstructure

technologystructure

organisationstructure

rewardstructure

measurementsystems

managementmethods

organisationalculture

politicalpower

individualbelief systems

Physical Technical Layer

Infrastructure Layer

Value Layer

IS33 BPR/BPM 5Weeks 9 2007

The Culture WebProf. Johnson at Cranfield School of Management used a web to illustrate the relationships among different elements which shape the 'culture' of an organisation: (see also Peppard and Rowland (1995))

The

Paradigm

Power

Structure

Organisational

Structures

Control

System

Rituals &

Routines

StoriesSymbols

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A typical BPR approach4 key phases: initiating a project

raise awareness of BPR, allocate key roles, understand the key processes, benchmarking

defining scope and targets analysis and re-design implementation and on-going

improvements

Parfett M (ed), The BPR Handbook, NCC Blackwell, 1994

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Process Streamlining- Harrington1. Bureaucracy elimination - removing unnecessary

administrative tasks, approvals and paperwork.2. Duplication elimination - removing identical activities

that are performed at different parts of the process.3. Value-added assessment - evaluating every activity in

the business process to determine its contribution to meeting customer requirements. Real value-added activities are the ones that the customers would pay you to do.

4. Simplification - reducing the complexity of the process.5. Process cycle-time reduction - determining ways to

compress cycle time to meet or exceed customer expectations and minimize storage costs.

6. Error proofing - making it difficult to do the activity incorrectly.

Harrington H J, Business Process Improvement, McGraw Hill, 1991

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Critique of BPR - Brown & Duguid Over-emphasis on process and overlook

knowledge Only suitable for a narrow band of operations Have a ‘linear’ view of information flow, not a

true reflection of actual flow of information in an organisation which quite often requires collaborative problem solving

Assumed well defined input/output + targeted information, but in real life, ‘there are areas where making sense, interpreting, and understanding are both problematic and highly valued’

..see handout pp. 97-103 of B & D, Chapter 4

(but there is still a need to manage business processes – hence BPM activities continue)