Week 9 The relationship between BPR and the core competitiveness
Source / Reference:
1) “Study and Application of BPR Strategy Based on Core-Competence”by 李冠强
http://www.lw23.com/lunwen_1354992/

Subject:
The relationship between BPR and the core competitiveness
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Response:

BPR should be using their core resources as a guide. Based on the strategic concept of the core competitiveness, the company has only to establish the existing advantages on the basis of the strategy that will guide enterprises to obtain or maintain long-lasting strategic advantage. Therefore, enterprises should give more consideration to their ability and resources, to operate business in the areas that has certain advantages, rather than simply consider market appeal, the blind into other areas, especially in the lack of strategic association with its core competitive advantage industrial fields. This pointed out the direction for the enterprise BPR.

BPR should be conducive to the formation of the enterprise core competencies. BPR is an effective way for the formation of the core competitiveness of enterprises through business process reengineering, and re-integration of the necessary elements of competitiveness. If the business is in business process reengineering is not explicitly access and integration of important elements of competitiveness as a strategic goal, over the pursuit of short-term financial benefits, it is possible be affected after the disappearance of the short-term financial interests, while also miss some opportunities to get the key elements of competitiveness. Therefore, BPR should be the strategic goal of positioning in as soon as possible to access and integrate the core competitiveness of the training and development resources that are important elements, rather than short-term interests of the lure.

BPR need to focus on combine internal competition elements. The combination of elements of the internal competition is an important part of their core competitiveness. At present, most enterprises increase varying degrees of efficiency and competitiveness through business process reengineering in business processes than in the past, but often ignore the integration of these elements of competitiveness, not only lack effective collaboration in the overall process of institutional, also lack of integration between the various processes in the technology, marketing and management. Competitive elements of the restructuring process are the process of extension of the original core competitiveness of enterprises and through the complementary advantages to establish a new competitive advantage, core competitiveness and growth. Therefore, business process reengineering, need to pay attention to the internal reorganization of the elements of competitiveness, so that the potential competitive advantage can be achieved

Week 8 How important is business process in BPR?
Source / Reference:
1) “Organizational Redesign (Business Process Re-engineering) (BPR)”
http://www.smthacker.co.uk/organisational_redesign.htm

Subject:
How important is business process in BPR?
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Response:

Processes become the focus of attention of many management gurus and top CEO in the past 10 years.

Almost all the articles in the book “Harvard Business School Harvard Management classic Series” focus around the transformation of process that can develop strategy theme successfully.

In simple words, the process is the order of things. Davenport’s definition given is “the business process is orderly work activities across time and space, it has a start point and end point, and clear inputs and outputs”.

The main point of this definition is that it points out the "process" must have "time control", namely a clear beginning and end. At the same time, the process must have clear expectations and measure results, which are clear input and output.

On the surface, the enterprise organization is divided by the businesses and functions, but in fact the important role is the process. Present in the actual process are personnel, material and cash flow, but information technology companies need to pay close attention to hidden "knowledge flow" and "information flow" that behind these visible "flow". The knowledge and information flow are the value of the enterprise resource.

Different departments and different personnel, and outside the enterprise, is the inspection process is complete, are the touchstone of process. Hence, the process as a combination of activities is actually an effective channel of the value chain to pass.

Through the process to re-understanding of the enterprise, is one of the most important management ideas of the late 20th century.

Measure the different states of the process, in fact, is a measure of the resource utilization efficiency and the effect of transform resources in a process, such as time, resources, human resources, material resources and financial resources. Information flow process is complete, effective, a sign of health, which gives a measure may be.

If there is no effective measure, the process cannot achieve a normal and orderly operation.

Week 7 What are the characteristics of BPR methodologies?

Source / Reference:
1) "Reviewing Engineering Methodologies"
http://www.prosci.com/bpr_method.htm

Subject:
What are the characteristics of BPR methodologies?
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Response:

To do any works there have procedural requirements. Enterprise business processes are clearly a work or something, what order, what standards, what the time to complete. Whether large or small enterprises, regardless of the technology-paid business or process traditional enterprise, regardless of the lean enterprise or extensive management of the enterprise, has its own business processes. Only the enterprise has advanced management has more scientific of business processes, the attitude can also attaches great importance to the institutional building of the business processes to improve business processes based on changes in the market in time.

BPR implementation method is specific, there are four steps: setting goals (visioning), research, innovation and implementation. It did not analyze the BPR process. It has a direct jump to the stage of the innovation and implementation. Therefore, the core elements of BPR is demolished for redevelopment of the methodology, this approach emphasizes the set goals, research, and re-establish the business process, regardless of the previous status of the enterprise.

Application of BPR method is to encourage creative thinking. BPR methods are not limited to the original thinking, but on the basis of innovation, design a new process, and put into application.

The existing processes in many companies often cannot meet the needs of users, and even many of the processes already poor to the point where you want to waste. In addition, the process of continuous improvement process, we need to measure, analyze and rethinking, these all need to take a very long time, so many companies eager. Therefore, many companies have adopted BPR method, the BPR approach with particular emphasis on IT technology, the ERP system. This enterprise companies include Hewlett-Packard and Ford.

BPR is fast, it do not require a lot of time for analysis. BPR process is not drawn from the analysis, but from the best practices. According to the best practices of world-class company, to develop similar processes and implementation procedures, thereby greatly saving time.

Week 6 What are the success and failure factors of BPR process?

Source / Reference:
1) "Success and failure factors of BPR"
http://www.powerfulwords.co.uk/sample-assignments/project-management/success-and-failure-factors-of-bpr.php

Subject:
What are the success and failure factors of BPR process?
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Response:

About 70% of the BPR projects failed to achieve the intended purpose or fail in the end. A part of the reasons for the failure is due to the unrealistic vision and expectations of the restructuring, and the lack of attention and understanding of the key factors important to note that in the reengineering process is the key reasons for the failure.

Although the companies spend a lot of money, time and effort to restructure process, but about 50 to 70% of the enterprises did not achieve the purpose of reengineering or get a large improvement.

Reasons for the failure

1.      Wrong choice of the timing and conditions of the reengineering

The enterprise does not necessarily need to carry out a thorough reorganization. Typically, the implementation of enterprise business process reengineering three categories: enterprise diehard acceptable but is about to troubled companies and the current situation but I hope the competitors far behind the enterprise.

The implementation of BPR, although high-yield projects, is also accompanied by great risks, so must be clear the motivation of business process reengineering, and to create its unique core competitiveness.

2.      Error selection of the business process

You must first analysis clearly all the processes, problems the most prominent part of reorganization or core areas. How to determine this process is a hard work. The specific analysis must consider the following issues, whether the process is become the "bottleneck" of the enterprise development? Can this process resolve the problem after the reorganization of the enterprises that is facing the crisis? How large is the probability of success of the process reengineering? How serious of the consequences of failure of process reengineering?

3.      The wrong interpretation of the role of IT

BPR is equivalent in IT is wrong, while ignoring the role of IT is also wrong. The true value of IT is that it provides the necessary tools and means, so people have the ability to break the traditional rules of management, and to create new ways of working to bring new growth point of the enterprise.

4.      The immature of BPR

So far, BPR is just a thought, it cannot be called a theory. BPR is still far from mature as a revolutionary theory, the deep-seated understanding of the internal mechanism of BPR and the nature of law is far from established. Unsound methodology, analytical tools are not effective, both are the factors impeding the success of BPR in practice.

In addition, the causes of failure include, focus on business processes, recombinant confused with other conventional ways of improvement, only concerned with the design of the process while ignoring the other constraints; time delay for too long so that people lose the reorganization patience and reorganization of all business processes.