As we all know business process reengineering is no easy task for any organization regardless of the size.

Unlike business process management or improvement, both of which focus on working with existing processes, BPR means changing the said processes fundamentally.
This can be extremely time consuming, expensive and risky. Unless you manage to carry out each of the steps successfully, your attempts at change might fail.

The following are our business methodology.

Identity and Communicating the Need for Change

If you are small startup, this can be a piece of cake, you realize that your product has a high user drop off rate, send off a text to your co-founder, and suggest a direction to pivot.

For a corporation, however, it can be a lot harder. There will always be individuals who are happy with things as they are, both from the side of management and employees. The first might be afraid that it might be a sunken investment, the later for their job security.

Risk of Failure: Not Getting Buy-In from the Company

BFTTT consultants will guide you on the best options to get buy-in from SME’s. This will help in avoiding the pitfall. However, your business process reengineering efforts might be destined to fail long before they even start. We will work with you to make your BPR succeed.

Business Process Re-Engineering can seriously impact on everyone in the company, and sometimes this can appear to be a negative change for some. Some employees might, for example, think the organization would let them all go if your organization finds a better way to function (which is a real possibility).

In such cases, even if the management is on board, the initiative might fail because the employees aren’t properly engaged. We will further assist your organization on the best options to overcome this pitfall.

Usually, it is possible to get the employees buy-in by motivating them or showing them different views they were not aware of. Sometimes, however, the lack of employee engagement might be because of a bad workplace culture something that might need to be dealt with before starting any BPR initiatives.

Put Together a Team of Experts

As with any other project, business process reengineering needs a team of highly skilled, motivated people in your organization who will carry out the needed steps. Our professional consultants will provide their expertise in in this area.

In most cases, we recommend a team which consists of:

• Senior Manager. When it comes to making a major change, your organization needs the supervision of someone who can call the shots. If a BPR team does not have someone from the senior management, our program management team will they’ll have to get in touch with them for every minor change.
• Operational Manager. As a given, you will need someone who knows the ins-and-outs of the process – and that’s where the operational manager comes in. They’ve worked with the process (es) and can contribute with their vast knowledge.
• Reengineering Experts. Finally, you will need the right engineers. Reengineering processes might need expertise from a number of different fields, anything from IT to manufacturing. While it usually varies case by case, the right change might be anything – hardware, software, workflows, etc.

Risk of Failure: Not Putting The Right Team Together

Some if the pitfalls

If the team consists of individuals with a similar viewpoint and agenda, for example, they might not be able to properly diagnose the problems/solutions.

If the team involve too many or too few people. In the first case, the decision making might be slowed down due to conflicting viewpoints. In the later, there might not be enough experts in certain fields to create adequate solutions. Our consultants will work to mitigate this problem.

It is hard to put all that down as a framework, as it depends on the project itself. There is one thing, however, that benefits every BPR team: having a team full of people who are enthusiastic (and yet unbiased), positive and passionate about making a difference.

Finding the Inefficient Processes and Define Key Performance Indicators (KPI)

Once we have the team ready and about to kick-off the initiative, your organization will need to define the right KPIs. We do not want to adapt to a new process and then realize that you do not keep some expenses in mind the idea of BPR is to optimize, not the other way around.

While KPIs usually vary depending on what process you are optimizing, the following can be very typical:

Manufacturing

• Cycle Time, the time spent from the beginning to the end of a process
• Changeover Time, time needed to switch the line from making one product to the next
• Defect Rate, percentage of products manufactured defective
• Inventory Turnover, how long it takes for the manufacturing line to turn inventory into products
• Planned VS Emergency Maintenance, the ratio of the times planned maintenance and emergency maintenance happen

IT

• Mean Time to Repair, average time needed to repair the system / software / app after an emergency
• Support Ticket Closure rate, number of support tickets closed by the support team divided by the number opened
• Application Dev. the time needed to fully develop a new application from scratch
• Cycle Time, the time needed to get the network back up after a security breach

 

Once we have the exact KPIs defined, we will go after the individual processes. The easiest way to do this is to do business process mapping. While it can be hard to analyze processes as a concept, we will have everything written down step by step.

This is where the operational manager comes in handy, we will work close to make it marginally easier to define and analyze the processes.

Usually, there are 2 ways to map out processes:

• Process Flowcharts is the most basic way to work with processes. Grab a pen and paper and write down the processes step by step.
• Business Process Management Software using software for process analysis can make everything a lot easier. Our consultants use Tallyfy, for example, to digitize your processes, set deadlines, etc. Simply using such software might end up optimizing the said processes as it allows for easier collaboration between the employees.

 

Risk of Failure: Inability to Properly Analyze Processes

 

We analyze the processes and avoid the pitfall or, to put it more succinctly ‘Impatience’. It is uncommon for organization to try business process reengineering if their profits are soaring and the projections are looking great.

BPR is usually called for when things are not going all that well and businesses need drastic changes. So, it can be very tempting to hurry things up and skip through the analysis process and start carrying out the changes. Our approach is to perform thoroughly analysis and not rush into any decision.

There are always time and money pressures in the business world, and it is the responsibility of the senior management to resist the temptation and make sure the proper procedure is carried out. Problem areas need to be identified, key goals need to be set and business objectives need to be defined and this takes time. However, we will assist your organization on the best approach based on our past experience.

Ideally, each stage requires input from groups from around the business to ensure that a full picture is being formed, with feedback and ideas being taken into consideration from a diverse range of sources. The next step is to identify and prioritize the improvements that are needed and those areas and processes that need to be scrapped.

Reengineer the processes and Compare KPIs

Finally, once we are done with all the analysis and planning, we will commence implementing the solutions and changes on a small scale.

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