Riding the productivity wave through BPR

Traditional definition puts business process reengineering (bpr), as radical rethinking and fundamental redesign of business processes to yield dramatic results in the contemporary measures of cost, quality and service. Getting dramatic results implies there can be a gross difference in the way ‘things can be done’, from ‘what is being done’ currently. Either the stakeholders (anybody who is directly or indirectly involved in the operations) are ignorant on the operational side or on the technological side or both, or unaware of the global best practices. Most of the times it’s the ignorance of technological advances and best practices, which leads to gross inefficiency, by assuming near rationality of stakeholders.

By nature technology can promise only speed, scale and transparency to organization. Mere automation of existing structures and systems breeds more inefficiency or at the best does marginal improvements. Adoption of technology is as important as identification of the same itself. ‘What can the new technology do, which is not done currently’, is a pertinent question, rather than asking ‘how technology can automate what is being done currently’. The pertinent question shall lead to technology identification as well as adoption.

Identifying the best practices can be quite tricky, since how can it be ensured that, ‘what is identified is the best-in-class’ or how can it be verified, ‘what is best-in-class is best for particular organizational context’; but the awareness yields to better design of structures and systems.

By nature, reengineering transforms organization from the functional silos to a process centric enterprise. For that, the organizational strategies are broken down into operational goals, and teams are formed to realize the set goals. Each operational goal(s) will be characteristic of a process (a collective mindset of stakeholders to achieve a predefined output, which is of value to the customer, by doing a set of activities sequentially or parallely).

To reengineer the businesses means to reengineer the existing business processes. For that, the underlying rules and assumptions behind the existing structures and systems have to be drill down and analyzed. While doing this, keep in mind ‘what is of value to the customer’, ‘what are the non value added elements (to enable value added activities)’, and ‘what are the wastes’ that can be totally eliminated. Hence maximize value added elements, minimize non value added elements, and eliminate waste while redesigning the business processes. Once the design is ready, look at the available technologies (considering cost benefit analysis), for automating the redesigned processes to the extent possible. The piloting of the newly designed processes and measuring their key performance indicators, shall reveal the improved business productivity (a function of efficiency and effectiveness).

The best practices helps to identify the gaps vis-à-vis the existing processes to get a fair idea for re designing the business processes. Technology should be chosen accordingly to fit the newly envisaged processes. The change management needs to address the behavioral issues in the new process centric environment, for enabling the symbiotic relationship among people, process and technology. In a nutshell, the reengineering engagements try to rediscover and reinvent the businesses for achieving stakeholder delight!