Improving the success rate of business process re-engineering projects: A business process re-engineering framework

Aphelele Nkomo,Carl Marnewick

doi:10.4102/sajim.v23i1.1259

Abstract

Background: Financial institutions in South Africa are implementing business process re-engineering (BPR) on a regular basis because of the fast-changing industry. However, the success of these projects is low because of the lack of clearly defined roles, an unclear definition of what BPR is, the inability to link BPR projects to organisation strategies and the lack of documentation to guide BPR activities. Accordingly, there is a need to define a framework to guide the implementation of BPR projects. Objectives: The researchers embarked on this study in order to define a framework to ensure improvement of BPR in financial institutions. The framework should assist in providing guidelines when conducting BPR activities and will enable plans for BPR projects in terms of knowing which skills and roles to source for these projects. Method: A conceptual BPR framework was developed and BPR experts from financial institutions were then engaged to determine whether the framework would work. The engagements included understanding the challenges faced and how they could be combated, understanding the roles involved and determining if organisations had BPR frameworks in place. This subsequently led to a final framework being consolidated. Results: This study presents the recommended BPR framework that can be used by financial institutions to achieve success in their projects. The framework incorporates project management and change management processes and ensures alignment of BPR activities with the project phases. It also ensures that the activities are clearly stipulated and the roles performing the activities are clearly defined. It considers time management, planning aspects and effective communication within BPR projects. Conclusion: The proposed framework can be used by financial institutions to manage their re-engineering projects. This framework overcomes most of the known challenges and combines two disciplines, that is, project management and business process re-engineering.

Highlights

Hammer and Champy (1993:53) defined business process re-engineering (BPR) as a ‘fundamental rethinking and radical redesign of business processes to achieve dramatic improvements in critical measures of performance, such as cost, quality, service and speed’
This study presents the recommended BPR framework that can be used by financial institutions to achieve success in their projects
This framework overcomes most of the known challenges and combines two disciplines, that is, project management and business process re-engineering

Summary

Introduction

Hammer and Champy (1993:53) defined business process re-engineering (BPR) as a ‘fundamental rethinking and radical redesign of business processes to achieve dramatic improvements in critical measures of performance, such as cost, quality, service and speed’. BPR initiatives are conducted by organisations in order to understand their current business processes and to define how those processes can be optimised. This is necessary as new processes, organisational structures or systems arise (Evans, Mason-Jones & Towill 1999). Organisations undertake BPR projects to optimise the performance of current or new processes with the ultimate goal of improving productivity and performance of the organisation. The lack of standardisation makes it difficult for BPR experts to document and analyse business processes (Indulska et al 2009). Financial institutions in South Africa are implementing business process re-engineering (BPR) on a regular basis because of the fast-changing industry. There is a need to define a framework to guide the implementation of BPR projects

Objectives

Results

Discussion

Conclusion