Week 8 – Process Redesign (1)

Source / Reference:

1. EL SAWY, Omar A. (2001). Redesigning Enterprises Processes for e-business, Irwin/McGraw-Hill, New York, USA.

Subject:
How to scope an enterprise process?

 Response:

In business process redesign (BPR), there are several key phases. The table below showed the three main phases in BPR with software, namely, scoping the process, modeling, analysis, and redesign of the process, and planning process integration. In this article, we will focus on the first phase, scoping enterprise process.

There are seven chief activities in the phase of scoping the process.

1.      Operationalize process performance targets

To accomplish this step, BPR team should communicate with the process owners and sponsors to understand the trade-offs and priorities. BPR team leader should act as a coordinator in this step.

2.      Define process boundaries

In order to define the process boundaries, BPR team should hold a group meeting. The contents to be discussed are about customers, inputs, outputs, external entities and sub-processes, etc.

3.      Identify key process issues

A certain number of direct process participants such as customers, employees, and external entities and the inputs from them are needed for the sake of identification of key process issues. BPR core team needs to find out the key process issues with the help of inputs from the direct process participants.

4.      Understand best practices and define initial visions

Listing of known best practices should be responsible by a BPR team member based on the interaction with other members. Other team members should get to understand the known best practices through reading, visits, seminars, and consultants if they do not fully comprehend the practices.

5.      Familiarize participants with BPR software

The participants have to familiar with the selected BPR software and there are three types of familiarization for different kinds of participants. Conceptual Familiarization is get to know what the selected BPR software is, an overview of the software, all participant is suitable for this type. Another type is Test Drive which is to understand the use of basic functions of the software. This type is suitable for all BPR core team members. Last type is Learn to Use. The selected team members for modeling and redesign processes suitable for this type.

6.      Outline data collection plan and collect baseline data

There are the steps to achieve this activity. First step is to identify the sources of data which mean determine who will be the primary sources of data. Selection of case categorization criteria is the second step. Then, types of data needed and data collection methods have to be defined. Lastly, Members may start to collect the baseline data.

7.      Plan for modeling phase

The deliverable of this phase, which is the process scoping report, can effectively support the modeling phase.

Scoping the process is the foundation of BPR and it is very important to BPR. If this phase was not being done well, BPR may fail even though performances in other phases are good. The above activities guide the enterprise how to scope the process in a correct way.