Business Process Reengineering (Literature Review)
Abdul Basit M. Faysal
MBA ? MIS III
Business Process Reengineering is a management approach that examines a business, its interactions and its operations in attempt to improve the efficiency of the underlying processes. Thomas Davenport, a well-known BPR theorist, uses the term process innovation, which he 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".[1]
The first article being reviewed is a research report conducted to explore the success of IT enabled BPR projects [2]. The research divides all business processes into three categories; Intrafunctional (within a function), Interfunctional (encompassing several functions) and Interorganizational (crossing organizational boundaries). The study tries to find the industry trends for each category and also determines the dependence of success of BPR projects on the integration of IT strategy with the corporate strategy. The sample for the research comprised of three hundred vice presidents and IS executives. Findings of the research were:
? Proportion of Intrafunctional, Interfunctional and Interorganizational BPR projects were 28%, 49% and 23% respectively. The researchers inferred that intrafunctional BPR was given more consideration because of greater control over organization's internal processes, presence of poor interfaces among functions and similar factors and hence greater chance for improvement. Intrafunctional improvements are not that
substantial in terms of customer and business value because interfunctional inefficiencies are left intact. On the other hand, interorga ...