Week 8 - Redesign Process (1)

Source / Reference:

1.     David Morga, (2004)“PHS Management Training” http://www.training-management.info/PDF/BPR%20Training.pdf

2.     Hammer, M. and Champy J. (1993), Re-engineering the Corporation, Harper Business books

3.     http://ducati.doc.ntu.ac.uk/uksim/journal/Vol-7/No-4-5/Paper1.pdf

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Response:

So far, we’ve learnt many about BPR, from the basic idea to the methodologies that we use to analyze the process that we planned to be redesigned. However, before we implement the BPR, according to the BPR Methodologies from the previous chapter, we have to redesign the process.

In this week, we had mainly focus on the Process Redesign from BPR Methodology – Phase 3. This phase is talking about the scoping the enterprise process, modeling and analyzing it with BPR software. In the following part, I would like to:

1.     Summarize the lecture notes

2.     Investigate the importance of scoping the process

3.     Make a conclusion

Summarize the lecture notes

Before a BPR team redesigns the enterprise process, process scoping is the first step that helps to identify the process that have to be redesigned. It involves several activities that have to undertake before jump into next part – modeling. They are:

1.      Operationalize process performance targets

2.      Define process boundaries

3.      Identify key process issues

4.      Understand best practices & define initial visions

5.      Familiarize participants with BPR software

6.      Outline data collection plan & collect base line data

7.      Plan for modeling phase

Operationalize process performance targets

Clearly defining the goals to redesign the process is vital. To set a goal, BPR team need to concrete process performance targets, making sure for each process that is measurable and tangible. Clear definition can give the BPR team a clear vision for what they target on and avoid the misunderstandings while undergoing the redesign.

Define process boundaries

Process boundaries such as starts, ends, customers, I/O, build an initial common high-level portrait of the process scope i.e. the first picture of the process. It provides the information that which data should be collected in order to model the phase. However, as the business process and environment might change, it is important that the flexibility for the scope to change should be also considered.

Identify key process issues

This activity is to identify the key process issues, which is a starting assessment point for the BPR team. Normally, they will ensure customer input early as most key processes in which the customer is the main factor for judging assessment. They will identify the key issues in different ways such as input from different parties, e.g. customer, external entities or employees. Interview and questionnaire are the other method to identify the key process issue. Categorization will come after elicit process issues had been determined. BPR team will distill the key process issues and present in a summarized form for further study.

Understand best practices & define initial visions

After a series of study on the key process issues, core BPR team should understand known best practices for the selected process. Then they have to define and document the preliminary visions of the new process.

Familiarize participants with BPR software

Since BPR team has to fully model a new process and stimulate it concretely, conceptual familiarization on the selected BPR software is a must. BPR software can help to test and stimulate the process in a visible way.

Outline data collection plan & collect base line data

The methods of data collection are the following:

-          Identify key sources(informants) of data

-          Select (process) categorization criteria

-          Define types of data needed

-          Define data collection methods

-          Start collecting baseline data

Though the methods are known, the difficulties in data collection should be well-aware.

1.      People in the process may not give the BPR effort enough attention because of other priorities or dislike of BPR.

2.      It is the first time that people in the process try to describe the process

Therefore, a good outline data collection plan should be well-constructed before taking the baseline modeling, which is the default case or typical process cases for comparing the performance with the “To-be” model at the later on.

Plan for modeling phase

After preparing all the process scoping reports, the plans for modeling can be started by using BPR software as a tool to support the modeling process.

The importance of scoping the process

“A good project kick-off is important to getting a BPR project 'off on the right foot'. It includes setting expectations, selecting and releasing team members, communicating to the organization, briefing the team and providing the structure to support and manage the project. “ From David Morgan

As David Morgan said, a good start is important to a BPR project. Since the first step – scoping the process meaning that not only define the goal, set the boundaries, data collecting, modeling the process, etc but to provide a better and whole picture of what BPR should be done and the goal should be achieved. That’s consistent with what we’ve talk about on previous chapter – why so many organization are fail to using the BPR. The problem are rooted at the starting point – scoping.

Business Process Reengineering Defined 

'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...’ from Hammer & Champ

The definition of BPR is simple but include the meaning that process fundamental rethink and radical redesign. That means before we consider to re-shuffle the process, we have to think about the fundamental idea, the root. And set the boundaries in order to compare the improvement with the “To-be” process. Therefore, scoping an enterprise process before starting BPR is vitally important.

Conclusion

It is suggested that scoping process is important to BPR. However, some activities in which the action might be difficult to be done and thus affect the result of BPR such as data collection plan. People might don’t understand why and don’t know how to describe the process at the first time.