Introduction
In a fast-paced business environment, it has become a necessity for organizations to come up with strategies to improve service delivery while reducing operational costs. Business process reengineering has to do with identifying, analyzing, and redesigning an organization’s major business procedures with the key aim of increasing or improving output. The aim is to “ensure that there is efficient utilization of resources to reduce costs and ensure that better services are provided by different departments in the organization” (Davenport, 1993). These different functions carry out their functions by setting their departmental objectives with the overall business mission and vision. Also, known as business redesign, re-engineering makes use of technology to improve the various business processes and not entirely replace the way of doing things in the business. Technology plays a vital part in business processes re-engineering. It ensures proper communication within the business and also between the business and the outside world (p. 124). This can be through shared databases, wireless communication systems, automatic identification, and tracking among others.
Body
The first step in the business process of engineering is making sure that the business has a practical mission. It should be directly related to business goals. Goals are usually drawn from the mission. Goals ensure that the various departments are aligned to meet the overall business mission. Meeting these departmental goals ensures that the various steps of improvement in the production of goods and services. Business process re-engineering ensures that the various departments are giving their optimal performance (Grover, 1995). Most of all it seeks to improve the whole business process in general and recognizes the fact that the whole business success. This is a distinguishing factor between re-engineering and process improvement that focus on functional improvement (Grover, 1995).
The first step in a functional business re-engineering process making sure that the business vision dictates the business goals. Then you have to make sure you correctly identify the business departments where changes have to be made. These are those areas that seem to have goals that are contradicting the business mission. One has to understand these processes targeted for change to know where there are shortcomings and how best to solve them. Also, identify areas where technology can be incorporated to make them more productive.
When re-engineering the business several factors determine how the process is to be affected. If there are emerging conflicts due to the business process, re-engineering should seek to come up with solutions to these conflicts. The presence of distorted communication that is not timely is a sign that engineering needs a high percentage of technologically improved communication strategies. Reengineering business processes should be done with a lot of care. This makes sure that it does not upset the entire organization. It can lead to detrimental effects like lay off of workers since it tends to assume that business low performance is because of underperformance of people. In business reengineering, it is important to note that downsizing staff notes the key point here, but other important factors should be put under consideration (Davenport, 1995). Taking the step-by-step approach is a more viable option than replacing the whole system at once.
It is a smart move for an organization to adapt business re-engineering strategies as it increases profits.
Conclusion
In conclusion, business reengineering is a radical change in the way an organization carries out its activities to adapt to changing needs of customers, competitors, and other key business indicators.
References
Davenport, T (1993). Process Innovation: Reengineering work through information technology. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.
Grover, V (1995). Business Process Change: Reengineering Concepts, Methods and Technologies. New Jersey: Idea Group Publishing.