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1 ABSTRACT In today·s ever-changing world, the only thing that doesn·t change is ¶change·itself. In a world increasingly driven by the three Cs: Customer, Competition andChange, companies are on the lookout for new solutions for their businessproblems. Recently, some of the more successful business corporations in theworld seem to have hit upon an incredible solution: Business ProcessReengineering (BPR). Some of the recent headlines in the popular press read, ´Wal-Mart reduces restocking time from six weeks to thirty-six hours.µµ Hewlett Packard·s assembly time for server computers touches new low- four minutes.µ ´Taco Bell·s sales soars from $500 million to $3 billion .µ The reason behind thesesuccess stories: Business Process Reengineering!Thos paper provides an insight to the srcin of the entire concept and also themajor scenarios affiliated to the remarkable concept. Success history of brandleaders like General Electric and Godrej form the major part of this paper whichwill help to proclaim the relevance of such an approach in the contemporaryevolving business environment. 2 IN TRODUCT I O N Business process reengineering (BPR) is, in computer science andmanagement, an approach aiming at improvements by means of elevatingefficiency and effectiveness of the business process that exist within and acrossorganizations. The key to BPR is for organizations to look at their businessprocesses from a clean slate perspective and determine how they can bestconstruct these processes to improve how they conduct business.Business process reengineering is also known as BPR, Business ProcessRedesign, Business Transformation, or Business Process Change Management.Reengineering is a fundamental rethinking and radical redesign of businessprocesses to achieve dramatic improvements in cost, quality, speed, and service.BPR combines a strategy of promoting business innovation with a strategy of making major improvements to business processes so that a company canbecome a much stronger and more successful competitor in the marketplace.The main proponents of reengineering were Michael Hammer and James A.Champy. In a series of books including Reengineering the Corporation , Reengineering Management , and T he Agenda , they argue that far too muchtime is wasted passing-on tasks from one department to another. They claimthat it is far more efficient to appoint a team who are responsible for all thetasks in the process. In The Agenda they extend the argument to includesuppliers, distributors, and other business partners.Re-engineering is the basis for many recent developments in management. Thecross-functional team, for example, has become popular because of the desire tore-engineer separate functional tasks into complete cross-functional processes. Also, many recent management information systems developments aim tointegrate a wide number of business functions. Enterprise resource planning,supply chain management, knowledge management systems, groupware andcollaborative systems, Human Resource Management Systems and customerrelationship management systems all owe a debt to re-engineering theory. 3 Bus i ¡ ss p ¢ £ ¤ ¡ ss ¢ ¡¡ gi ¡¡ ¢ i g ¥ B P ¦ § ¨ ¡ g © © s © p ¢ iv © ¡ sector techn i ue to he lp or g © n i © t i ons un d © m enta lly reth i nk how the y d o the i r work i n or d er to d ra m at i ca lly imp ro v e custo m er ser vi ce , cut o p erat i ona l costs , an d ¨ eco m e wor ld c l ass co mp et i tors . ke y st im u l us or reen gi neer i n g has ¨ een the cont i nu i n gd e v e l o pm ent an d d e pl o ym ent of so p h i st i cate d i nfor m at i on s y ste m s an d networks . L ea di n g or g an i at i ons are ¨ eco mi n g ¨ o ld er i n us i n g th i s techno l o gy to su pp ort i nno v at iv e ¨ us i ness p rocesses , rather than ref i n i n g current wa y s of d o i n g work . Reengineering guidance and relationship of Mission and Work Processes to Information Technology. Bus i ness p rocess reen gi neer i n g i s one a pp roach for re d es ig n i n g the wa y work i s d one to etter su pp ort the or g an i at i on's mi ss i on an d re d uce costs . een gi neer i n g starts w i th a h ig h- l e v e l assess m ent of the or g an i at i on's mi ss i on , strate gi c g oa l s , an d custo m er nee d s . Bas i c uest i ons are aske d, such as D oes our mi ss i on nee d to e re d ef i ne d? ! re our strate gi c g oa l s a lig ne d w i th our mi ss i on ? W ho are our custo m ers ? ! n or g an i at i on m a y f i n d that i t i s o p erat i n g on uest i onab l e assu mp t i ons , p art i cu l ar ly i n ter m s of the wants an d nee d s of i ts custo m ers . O n ly after the or g an i at i on reth i nks what i t shou ld be d o i n g, d oes i t g o on to d ec id e how best to d o i t . 4 W ithin the framework of this basic assessment of mission and goals,reengineering focuses on the organization's business processes--the steps andprocedures that govern how resources are used to create products and servicesthat meet the needs of particular customers or markets. As a structured orderingof work steps across time and place, a business process can be decomposed intospecific activities, measured, modeled, and improved. It can also be completelyredesigned or eliminated altogether. Reengineering identifies, analyzes, andredesigns an organization's core business processes with the aim of achievingdramatic improvements in critical performance measures, such as cost, quality,service, and speed.Reengineering recognizes that an organization's business processes are usuallyfragmented into sub-processes and tasks that are carried out by severalspecialized functional areas within the organization. ften, no one is responsiblefor the overall performance of the entire process. Reengineering maintains thatoptimizing the performance of sub-processes can result in some benefits, butcannot yield dramatic improvements if the process itself is fundamentallyinefficient and outmoded. For that reason, reengineering focuses on redesigningthe process as a whole in order to achieve the greatest possible benefits to theorganization and their customers. This drive for realizing dramaticimprovements by fundamentally rethinking how the organization's work shouldbe done distinguishes reengineering from process improvement efforts that focuson functional or incremental improvement.
