What is Business Process Reengineering? And what can it do for your business?

Business process reengineering is known in short as BRP and is considered a main way in which organisations become more modern and efficient. It is a management approach aimed at making improvements to your business through elevating the efficiency and effectiveness of the processes that exist within and across organisations. If you want business process reengineering to be successful then the key for organisations is to look at their business processes from a clean slate perspective in order to determine how they can best construct these processes to improve how they conduct business.

If you ever hear Business Process Redesign, Business Transformation, or Business Process Change Management then all of these also refer to business process reengineering. The use of business process reengineering can transform how people work, with what seems like minor changes having dramatic effects on cash flow, service and customer satisfaction. It is required in order to align people, processes and technology with strategies to achieve business integration.

If you implement business process reengineering into your business or organisation it will have an impact on your organisations performance. If individuals are motivated and working hard yet business processes are weighty your organisational performance will be poor.

In order to achieve the major improvements business process reengineering should be implemented in ways such as the following:

" Start with a mission statement and define the purpose of the organisation as well as what sets it apart " Define where your organisation is going and create a clear picture of the future position " Identify initiatives that will improve performance

Business strategy is the primary driver of business process reengineering initiatives and the other dimensions are governed by strategy's encompassing role. The organisation dimension reflects the structural elements of the company, such as hierarchical levels, the composition of organisational units, and the distribution of work between them. Technology is concerned with the use of computer systems and other forms of communication technology in the business.

In business process reengineering, information technology is generally considered as playing a role as enabler of new forms of organising and collaborating, rather than supporting existing business functions. The people / human resources dimension deals with aspects such as education, training, motivation and reward systems. The concept of business processes is the basic underlying idea of business process reengineering. These processes are characterised by a number of attributes such as; process ownership, customer focus, value adding, and cross-functionality.

If a business process reengineering project is being undertaken across the organisation it can require managing a massive amount of information about the processes, data and systems. To aid this you should have the right tools to support it otherwise the management of information can become an impossible task. The use of a good business process reengineering documentation tool is vital within any business process reengineering project. Some examples of these tools are as follows:

" Customisable meta data fields " The production of word documents or website versions of the procedures so that information can be easily maintained and updated " Object oriented technology so that changes to data only need to be made in one place and then change automatically throughout all the organisations, procedures and documentation.

About The Author Helen is the web master for Angel Start-ups. For more information regarding the use of Business Process Reengineering get in touch with Angel Start-ups today.