Business Process Re-engineering (BPR)

Business Process Re-engineering (BPR), is the fundamental rethinking and radical redesign of administrative processes to achieve fundamental improvements in critical performance measurement criteria, such as cost, quality, service, and speed.

It is an approach to achieving radical development in the performance of organizations/companies in a short time. Therefore, it is clear from the definition that business process engineering is one of the basic pillars of organizational change events, as organizational change includes changes in administrative processes, changing the organization’s culture and organizational structure. It is also one of the means that contribute to achieving a competitive advantage for organizations, as reengineering administrative processes contributes to increasing the organization’s ability to deal with and adapt to the surrounding environment and improve its ability to survive, grow, and increase the organization’s ability to cooperate between various specialized groups to achieve the general goals of the organization.

Business Process Reengineering (BPR), also known as “process reengineering” or “administrative engineering”, is a comprehensive and radical process of redesigning the company’s processes to improve them. This process includes all main and subsidiary processes after studying their feasibility and estimating the possibility of dispensing with them, simplifying them, merging them with other processes, or implementing them differently.

The Business Process Reengineering Program includes content such as:

1. Process Basics:

• The concept of the business process.
• The business process from the perspective of systems theory.
• The concept of processes, their elements, characteristics, and types.
• The business owner concept.

2. Business Process Engineering:

• Stages of business process engineering, including inventorying, designing, drawing, classifying, and flexible overlap between processes.
• The relationship of methodologies to business process engineering.

3. Business Process Reengineering:

• The concept of business process reengineering and its objectives.
• The basic factors for the success of business process reengineering.
• Steps of business process reengineering, including visualization, diagnosis, and analysis of current processes, redesign, determining the requirements for implementing the proposed work system, follow-up, and continuous improvement.

4. Analysis of current processes:

• Examine all tasks that work to achieve the same goal.
• Gather different functions together and prioritize the most logical actual work.
• Link parallel processes that lead to the same result within the process instead of merging the results at the end.
• Eliminate any unnecessary control systems.

5. Applying strategic cost management techniques:

• Use strategic cost management techniques to analyze and improve processes.
• Identify points that can be improved in terms of cost and efficiency.
• Apply business process reengineering using these techniques in the organization.

With these steps, organizations can achieve fundamental performance improvements and maintain competitiveness in the business market.

This process aims to achieve fundamental development in performance standards such as cost, quality, service, and speed, it is one of the modern management methods seeking to improve businesses by redesigning strategic processes, policies, organizational structures, and values.

Secrets of the success of business process reengineering

Reengineering can be considered a model that includes a set of mechanisms to improve the way institutions operate. This model helps improve the capabilities of managers in the face of competition by building new visions and a new message for the organization that helps to suggest and implement a series of steps:

1. The change must be fundamental

Business process reengineering raises fundamental questions that not only include the administrative methods and techniques currently used in business, but also go beyond them to the business itself, and the assumptions on which that business is based, such as: Why do we follow this work method? And why do we do this work and not others? These basic questions prompt workers to reconsider these assumptions.

2. The change must be radical.

What is needed in administrative process re-engineering must be radical, meaningful, and valuable rather than a superficial alteration that merely enhances and develops what already exists. Therefore, radical change means uprooting what exists from its roots and rebuilding it consistently with the organization’s requirements and goals.

3. The change must be in the processes.

Administrative process re-engineering focuses on analyzing and rebuilding administrative processes, not organizational structures, departmental tasks, responsibilities, and functions. The focus is on the administrative processes, not people and departments.

4. The results should be substantial and massive.

Re-engineering administrative processes seeks to achieve substantial and massive results, i.e. not limited to relative and formal improvement and development in performance, which is often gradual.

5. Change should be based on inductive not deductive thinking

Re-engineering administrative processes depends on induction, which involves searching for development and change opportunities before problems arise, not deduction, which involves holding off until a problem occurs then analyzing it and searching for appropriate solutions.

6. Focus on customers

Re-engineering administrative processes aims to direct the organization to focus on customers by identifying their needs and working to fulfill their desires so that processes are rebuilt to achieve this purpose.

7. Speed

Re-engineering administrative processes aims to enable the organization to carry out its work at high speed by providing the information required to make decisions and facilitating the process of obtaining it.

8. Quality

Re-engineering administrative processes aims to improve the quality of the services and products it provides to suit the needs and desires of customers.

9. Cost Reduction

Administrative process re-engineering aims to reduce costs by eliminating unnecessary processes and focusing on value-added processes.

Who needs business process re-engineering?

Three types of organizations need this program, as follows:

• Organizations in deterioration and suffer from high costs and low quality.
• Organizations in deterioration and their market share, profits, and stock value are decreasing.
• Distinguished organizations that have reached the peak of excellence and success. These organizations need this program to stay at the top and maintain the gap between them and their competitors.

Factors that may lead to the failure of business process re-engineering

• Unknowing how the extent of the problem is. Without the intention to test all existing processes, there will be no chance of success.
• Lack of training. Without training, attempts will fail. This is considered a one-time action to reduce costs. However, cost reductions are a by-product of the activity and not the main concern.
• Inadequate infrastructure. There is a need for adequate infrastructure and significant support from management and employees. Unfortunately, many initiatives never get off the ground due to insufficient efforts to secure support.
• Improving one department at the expense of another, i.e. there should be openness in evaluating each process in detail. Likewise, there should be a willingness to change whatever is required to achieve overall efficiency.
• Lack of time required to improve a business, too much internal focus, insufficient attention to the industry, and selecting best practices that are useful as benchmarks.

Best practices for reengineering processes to ensure successful implementation

The program can be successful by considering the following points:

• Meeting customer needs, where customer needs are prioritized, and this insight is used to guide business practices appropriately.
• Business needs analysis. Where financial benefits are achieved and help the organization to become more competitive.
• Forming a performance review team, where a critical analysis of all operational processes is conducted, asking relevant questions about the working method and how it can be improved.
• Continuous performance improvement, the willingness to look beyond traditional tasks and functional boundaries, and focus on results.
• Effective change management by evaluating all activities and tasks and eliminating activities that do not add more value.
• Appropriate IT infrastructure, there is a willingness to invest in the company’s IT infrastructure.

How do you determine your company’s readiness to implement reengineering?

The company must first meet the following conditions:

• The minimum number of employees must be 20 (at least 4 in administrative positions).
• Management must be innovative, as it must be enthusiastic about implementing new ways of working.
• A good IT infrastructure is required, meaning that management must be willing to invest heavily in IT.

Target Audience

Business analysts, systems analysts, business process analysts, project managers, IT professionals, and other stakeholders concerned with improving and reengineering business processes.

Guidance for Consulting and Training

Pioneers of management consulting, excellence, institutional development, and internationally accredited training according to the Saudi Standards and Quality Organization requirements, the Saudi Food and Drug Authority, and other accredited bodies that impose legal and mandatory requirements in the Saudi market.

To re-engineer administrative processes in your organization