All businesses have their ups and downs. If your company isn’t currently doing well, aside from implementing quick yet reliable fixes, you might want to look into making radical changes to turn things around.
You can introduce the proper new business process or update the existing procedures in your organization through business process reengineering or BPR.
BPR is a business management process that entails making substantial changes to vital organizational procedures and systems.
It involves introducing a new business process, updating existing procedures, or combining two or more existing systems to create a different one.
These new or updated processes can streamline business operations, reduce costs and waste and improve product and service quality. All these can enhance productivity and efficiency in your workplace, bringing about positive changes for your company.
Ensuring the Success of Business Process Reengineering
Business process reengineering can be a complex and painstaking undertaking.
You can ensure the efficiency and success of this process by following these vital BPR principles as you go about this endeavour:
1. Results over processes
One of the essential principles your BPR should revolve around is focusing on results over operational processes.
Many companies operate on systems filled with numerous handoffs, redundancies, distribution of responsibilities, and use of various communication lines.
These systems make different business processes and the entire operation disorganized, wasteful, and inefficient.
A successful BPR aims to eliminate all these redundant and unproductive processes by redesigning all jobs or roles to focus on results rather than individual tasks.
An excellent way to do this is by identifying your business goals first and then organizing or creating the necessary processes around them.
Doing so can create better strategies and procedures that guarantee you get your expected results.
2. Active involvement of key or concerned individuals
Another vital principle of successful reengineering is getting the employees handling or involved in certain operations to be more active or contribute more to the BPR process.
Start by ensuring that your employees are responsible for specific processes perform them. They should do them and avoid delegating them to their co-workers or subordinates.
This step can eliminate miscommunications, handovers, delays, and errors that can cause your business time and money.
You can also apply this principle to your customers or clients. If they have any problems regarding your products or services, let them fill out your customer complaint form instead of asking a staff member to do this.
This strategy allows the customers or clients to be part of the solution and help you and your team understand their issues and resolve them efficiently.
3. Decision making should be part of key processes
Delays in various work or business activities are usually caused by employees waiting for approval from their supervisors, managers, and other decision-makers.
You can prevent or minimize these disruptive and costly delays by allowing and enabling your qualified and trusted staff to make the decisions themselves when necessary.
If you want to be sure your employees can make the right decisions, invest in training programs that can hone their decision-making skills, confidence, and leadership potential.
You can also invest in tech tools to help employees make unbiased, data-based decisions that improve your organization’s workflow.
4. Departments should share resources and information
BPR aims to enhance communication and interconnectivity within the organization.
This goal should encompass not only teams or departments within the workplace but also other branches or offices.
To achieve this goal, you must invest in tools and implement processes that allow different departments to share resources and information. Doing so connects the teams and creates a centralized, more productive, and efficient operation.
Implementing this change can also improve the quality of service your company provides to your customers or clients.
5. Combining data collection and processing
This reengineering principle entails having the same employee or team gather and process information and complete the required work or activity.
Errors usually appear because of miscommunication or misunderstanding between the person or team who collects the information and those who process them.
Having only one employee or team gather and process data can reduce these human errors.
Consider investing in technology that automates and merges data collection and processing to make this process more efficient and free of human errors.
6. Data must be captured only once from its point of origin
This principle is related to the previous one and plays a vital role in the success of your BPR.
Data should only be collected when it appears or once you receive it and directly from the source.
This method can improve the data-gathering process significantly, making it more accurate and effective. It also guarantees the validity of the information since it was collected straight from the source.
Additionally, implementing this principle helps your organization cut costs since it reduces wasteful re-entries and inaccurate data entries.
It can eliminate the challenges of transmitting accurate information within and outside your organization.
7. Combining similar processes instead of the end results
This principle indicates that your company can become more productive if you can bridge different but similar processes instead of combining their outcomes.
This method is more beneficial since you can reduce delays in the overall process.
You and your team can coordinate these functions through constant communication and shared databases.
Everyone should also coordinate at the process execution stage to minimize costs and delays in the outcome.
Knowing these principles and implementing them correctly during business process reengineering are two different things.
Working with BPR consultants can help your organization derive the maximum value from business process reengineering without the money- and time-wasting mistakes that come with going the DIY route.
A BPR consulting firm can assist you in identifying weaknesses, gaps, and redundancies in your current business processes. From here, they can make recommendations regarding the changes and improvements you can make based on your goals and budget.
They will also work with you to create scalable and smart solutions based on your business operations, frameworks, and long-term goals.
With a well-thought-out BPR plan and help from the right consultants, you can make your business processes more efficient, straightforward, and consistent, enabling your company to survive and thrive even during challenging times.
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