WORK BASED ASSIGNMENT (WBA)

COURSE (e.g. DCM-II) SESSION (SATURDAY)

UNIT CODE (DBM 632): UNIT NAME: (BUSINESS PROCESS RE ENGINEERING)

INSTRUCTIONS: ATTEMPT ALL THE QUESTIONS

1. Explain the BPR Methodology selection Guidelines which needs to considered when

implementing BPR

Reengineering focuses on how an organisation can achieve important improvement in

process to meet High quality, speed, innovation, customization, and services for

customers. In specific, Hammer proposed seven selection guidelines when an

organisation seeks to implement business process reengineering.

Guideline 1: Organise around outcomes, not tasks - different specialised responsibility

completed by employees need to be combined together into one single job. The new job

should now bring together all the processes to create a well defined outcome. Organizing

around an outcome reduces the need for hand-off. Consequently, this provides higher

speed, increased productivity, and responsiveness to customer needs.

Guideline 2: Instruct employees that use output to perform the process - organization

should carry out work where it is. People who are close to the process to perform the

work. This helps shift work across all departments. For instance, employees can make

decisions without going through the normal process. Customers can make own repairs

without involvement of the company. Suppliers can also manage their inventories without

involving the ordering company.

information - this implies that people responsible for collecting information need to be

accountable when it comes to processing. This helps reduce all types of errors and

contact points.

Guide 4: treat geographically dispersed resources as though they are centralised -

Companies should have centralised databases and telecommunication networks to

integrate separate units or other staff work in different departments. This approach helps

create economies of scale while ensuring responsiveness to customers.

Guide 5: Integrate parallel activities and not results - The guideline suggests the need

to integrate parallel activities that will eventually from one unit. Moreover, the process

helps lower costs, delays in operations, and processes. The company must link such

parallel activities to help coordinate all processes.

Guide 6: put decision point where work is performed and build control into

processes - A company should make decisions that are part of work to be performed. All

controls must be part of the process.

Guide 7: Capture information at one time from the source- A company ought to

collect and capture information through an online information system only at one time

and at the source where such information is created. This is to help avoid all forms of

errors in data entry and associated costly entries.

Highlight the necessary attributes of a BPR methodology (5 marks)

1) Process ownership

Organizations rely on business process improvement to change internal operations to drive

efficiency during a process and impact operations. As the needs of a company grows over time,
the company must also continue to expand at the same speed. The owner of a program must be in

the forefront from the top management and business unit heads. They play a role of managing

and driving business operations.

2) Customer focus

The move away from functional specialisation to teams play an important role in BPR. In

specific, the idea is to become a customer focused business that allows small sb-parts of an

organisation to begin handling one customers and not a large group of customers.

3) Value-adding

During the evolution of business to increase efficiency, businesses introduce concept of total

quality control, lean, six-sigma, among others. Revolution seeks to add value to target customers.

Changes in process can add value through time of delivery, low costs to products, response to

queries, interaction through technology, and other positive experiences.

2. Explain the following BPR methodologies by giving their key features and relevancy to

modern organization

Hammer/Champy methodology

This methodology was found by Hammer and Champy. The pioneers found that most of the

companies make assumptions about their goals and objectives. Hammer and Champy suggested

seven principles that are useful in reengineering to improve quality, management and cot. The

principles likely to be used in the modern organization are such as:

goal for better outcomes.

 Identify all the organization process and priotize them in order to redesign the urgency.

Organizations should priotize the most urgent activities.

 Treat geographically dispersed resources as if they were centralized.

 Link parallel activities in the workflow instead of just integrating the results.

 Put the decision point where the work is performed.

 Capture information once and at the source.

Hammer and Champy defined BPR as fundamental rethinking and radical redesign of business

processes to achieve dramatic improvements in critical in contemporary measures of

performance such as costs, quality, service and speed. Hammer and Champy found out that BPR

contains four components, fundamental rethinking, radical redesign, dramatic improvement and

contemporary and critical measures of performance.

In the study, Champy and Hammer found out that there are six faces of methodology. The first

step is introduction to reengineering. In this step, there is communication and preparation of

‘case for action’ and the vision statement. ‘Case for action’ describes description of the business

problem and the current status. The vision and statement are meant to determine how the

organization is going to operate.

Identification of business processes is the second phase. This phase involves identification of

important business processes from a global view. The processes of the company are chosen

based on their high output.

same time. Hence, the company identifies the priotized processes companies elect processes to

redesign through their objectives. The company also consider the impact of the processes

selected to their customers.

Understanding the selected processes. Before moving to redesigning a process, reengineers need

to understand the concepts on the existing selected process. They should understand how well or

how poorly they perform. Detailed information of current process is not included in this phase.

The team members have the insight required to create a high level and superior design for better

productivity and profits.

The fifth phase is redesigning of the selected business processes. This is the most creative phase

since it involves redesigning of new ways and new rules of work invented. Imagination and

thinking characterize this phase.

The last phase is implementation of redesigned business process. Champy and Hammer do not

talk much about this phase since it depend on whether the other phases are properly performed.

Davenport methodology

Davenport puts information technology at the heart of business reengineering. The components

identified are such as: Develop business vision and process objectives. Identify the business

processes that should be reengineered. Davenport advises selecting not more than 15 processes at

a time. Understand the functioning and performance of the selected processes. And set up

performance benchmarks for the reengineered processes. Study how information technology

tools and applications can be applied to the newly designed business processes. Design a

functioning prototype of the new business process.. 

position IT at the heart of BPR. They recognize the existence of a recursive relationship between

IT capabilities and BPR. The following are the steps.

Develop a business vision and process objectives. The vision of the business is identified. Vision

such as cost reduction, time reduction, output quality improvement, quality work life, learning

and empowerment is defined.

Identify the processes to be redesigned. This is an essential processes are identified and

prioritized according to their redesign potential. Key business processes are identified either by

identification and prioritization of all processes or by identification of important processes this

step helps to Understand and measure the existing processes.

Identify IT levers is a step that show how information technology tools and applications can be

applied to the newly designed business processes. The aim of this step is to study the suitability

of the use of IT hardware and software for the newly designed work process.

Design and build a prototype for the new process. The actual design should not be viewed as the

end of the BPR. Rather, it should be viewed as a prototype, with successive iterations. Prototypes

help produce quick delivery of results when projects are implemented.

In this final step, the prototype will be tested throughout the organization prior to its

implementation. Notably, this step is the most important step of all to ensure the success of the

BPR of the organization

says encompasses the envisioning of new work strategies, the actual process design activity, and

the implementation of the change in all its complex technological, human, and organizational

dimensions. He also identifies the difference between BPR and other approaches that contribute

to the development of businesses.

Manganelli and Klein

Manganelli and Klein found out that Methodology only focus on those business processes that

are crucial to the strategic goals of the company and customer requirements. The manganelli and

Klein methodology breaks into five steps.

Preparation is the first step asks all directly involved persons to define goals and to prepare for

the business reengineering project. Identification is the second step; it defines a customer-

oriented process model of the organization, as well as selects major business processes for

redesign. Vision is the third step that serves to define at which performance level the processes

currently deliver and which higher level is required for the future. Technical & social design is

the fourth step, it breaks into two parallel sub-steps. Technical design deals with information

technology design to support the new technology while social design serves to design new work

environment for the people including organizational and personal development plans.

Transformation is the last step which is meant to implement the redesigned processes and work

environments within the organization.

Kodak methodology
 Kodak methodology developed by the international Kodak organization, this

methodology is applied across all Kodak facilities worldwide. The international Kodak

organization developed a business reengineering methodology that is being applied to Kodak

facilities around the world. The Kodak methodology breaks into five steps.

Project initiation is a step considered as key. It covers project planning and definition of all

project administration rules and procedures. Secondly, Process mapping is a step that sets the

project team up, designs a comprehensive process model for the organization and assigns process

managers for the progress of the work after implementation. New process design is the third step

that covers the redesign of selected business processes, taking into account the potential of

information technology. This step ends with the planning of a pilot implementation of the

redesigned processes. Business transition is the fourth step focused towards the implementation

of the newly designed processes within the organization. Adaptation of the organizations

infrastructure to the requirements of the newly designed processes is part of this step. Change

management is the last step is being performed parallel to the first four steps. The project team

handles barriers, which crop up during the course of the business reengineering project.

4. Discuss the key concepts of BPR

The following are key concept that can help a business to realize its core principles for customer

satisfaction. Reduce costs in business and increase competitiveness:

Business Vision and Objectives: Activities in BPR needs to begin with a clearly defined and

measurable objectives. The goal can be reducing costs, improving quality of product, or

increasing efficiency, the framework for what needs to be achieved has to be decided upon at the

outset, in line with the company’s vision and mission.

that it can be improved. Among these, those processes with direct impact on the company’s

output or those that clash with the company’s mission become part of the ‘red’ list. This clear

identification makes the difference between BPR success and failure.

Understand and Measure the Red Processes: having a list of slacking processes in hand, it is

imperative to identify how they were identified as such. Are they taking too much time to

complete? Is the quality of the outcome being compromised? Whatever the issue, each process

must be judged objectively either against industry standards or ethically obtained competitor best

practices.

Information System and Technology Capabilities: relevant and efficient IT system is key in

enabling BPR. The IT system keep a check on all factors affecting the change. Before setting out

on a radical BPR activity, it is vital to set in place information systems that can deal with the

level of change.

Design, Build and Test the New Prototype: prototype is tested out before launching of any

product. A failure at a testing stage should never be implemented at a larger scale. BPR projects

fail more often than not for a variety of reasons but a basic reason is the inability to identify and

accept any limitations at the testing stage. Some reasons for failure are such as attitudes of

workers

Adapting the Organization: Managing change brought about by BPR activities is the final

effort towards a successful project. Providing updated documentation, organizational structures,

governance models as well as updated charts of authority and responsibility leave little room for

confusion and allow a smooth transition into the new way of work. Therefore, BPR cannot be
changed once it go wrong at its onset. Hence it is a high risk that requires planning. It should

have a broad functional scope.

5. Illustrate the BPR model

A BPR goes through three phases - the analysis, design, and implementation phase. In all these

three phases, business owners seek ways to redesign, change and manage processes, and

transform the existing strategy, entire organization, process, or technology. The analysis phase is

when the key stakeholders in a company come together to conduct a number of analysis such as

the baseline, customer requirements, and review of the current process. All these helps

management identify major design specification. The design phase takes the design specification

to the second level to give it from. Besides, being successful in this phase requires the team to

rely on design principles. Five visible designs include High level, detailed level, improvement

feedback, validation, and plotting. The third phase now ensures the team actualize the process.

The team begins by planning on how to implement. Selecting expertise ensures the company

executes the initial change and how to manage a transition.