Business Process Re Engineering Consulting

The successful company means, successful on both financial and direction levels. Business Re engineering process plays significant task in today's business world. Let's try what's business process Re engineering or better known, as BPR is, well BPR means seeing outgrowths postulated in your company from origin level and changing them from basic degree.

We are well aware of world's growing economic system, people feel that every country has increased production to decrease of cost of product but I challenge anybody to pursue this policy to compete with China, that person definitely going to suffer. China actually has carried out BPR along with related technology like ERP, provide chain Management.

This is the process of Planning for all resources like all sections including finance, product, HR, sales etc. ERP means group effort of all environments bound together with mutual s/w applied by companies like SAP, Oracle, and People Soft etc. Astonishingly failure rate in case of ERP software program is 80 % and main reason being process not being studied before leading off on the physical process. Supply Chain Management is process preparation whole chain of management, ranging from providers provider to clients client. Successfully planned Supply chain results in smooth flowing of production from raw material form till it gives its net deliverance form. It also holds open wastage and handling cost, as one orders and fabrication granting to exact requirement of the companies.

Basic principles of BPR are as follows: First principle is altering process from basic level, most of the peoples feel that improving or altering being outgrowths is s/w BPR but this is a very improper sensing. First principle hence tells that you must change the process entirely and not keeping anything from the premature process. Second rule states that Business Process must be planned in such a way sequence of processes is optimal. Companies are inferring to change the process according to well designed software package instead of changing software package according to existing process, resulting in failure of whole organization. Third rule is regarding outgrowth as part of company, Instead of planning an individual outgrowth, without considering how it corresponds into the organization.

Hence Studying, Planning and changing the process in well projected way will result in splendid consequences. It will profit companies at the top to stay at number one. It will also help companies which are going to sink because of poorly designed processes and also the companies which neglected because of bad processes.

Model Affects Business Process Improvement

While many believe that the process should drive the technology because you only want to spend your limited technology budget on the most efficient process possible, an interesting change is occurring in the information technology (IT) environment with the increasing use of the Software-as-a-Service model.

The SaaS model is the next generation of software implementation models. Over the last decade, companies moved from the traditional software model (where the company provided the infrastructure to host the application, customized the solution to the company's specific requirements, provided the necessary IT support, and dealt with major upgrades every three to five years) to the Application Service Provider, or ASP, model (where the vendor hosted a software application on their hardware and leased out a unique instance to a company, which allowed a certain degree of customization).

The ASP model did not require companies to purchase on-site hardware, and provided the opportunity for a less expensive and quicker software implementation. In moving to the ASP model, companies hoped to reduce the total cost of ownership for a technology implementation.

Today, the SaaS model is rapidly growing and quickly defining the way companies implement software applications. You can think of SaaS as the next generation ASP, with a key difference being that all customers reside on the same instance. In this model, the vendor has responsibility for increases in capacity and scalability. They continually perform research and development, thus enabling them to provide more frequent enhancements to customers without the need for major upgrades. SaaS sales increased from 2010 to 2011 by 21% and estimates indicate that sales will more than double by 2015.

While companies enjoy reducing their technology investment, they do not necessarily want to use the same exact product that their neighbor uses. The SaaS model though depends on application standardization to keep costs down, which means limited or no customization. So, how do companies balance the financial benefit of the SaaS model with the need for unique business processes since companies differentiate themselves from competitors by their business processes, among other things?

A company has to identify what truly differentiates the business from the competition. What are the core competencies of your company? Accept that not all business processes are created equal and focus resources on building (or improving) business processes around your differentiators. For example:

• If research and development sets your company apart, focus on processes like idea generation, market research, and product development.
• If service delivery differentiates you, focus on processes like order processing, order fulfillment, and customer support.
• If retaining employees is critical, focus on employee-centric processes like recognition and succession planning.

Take advantage of the lower cost offered by the SaaS model for non-core business processes, but keep improving the business processes that differentiate you from your competition.

What Is Business Process Management

Business process management is a field in the operations management that mainly focuses on the improvement of the corporate performance by optimizing and managing the business processes of the company. This is therefore described as the process of process optimization. The business process management enables any organization that adopts it to be more effective, efficient and also more capable of changing the functionality that is focused in a more traditional and also a hierarchical management approach. These processes deeply impact the revenue generation as well as cost of a particular organization. As it is an approach of policy making, business process management sees these processes as very important assets to a particular organization that must be managed, understood and also developed.

Business process management has a life cycle and this life cycle consists of design, modeling, execution, monitoring, optimization and also reengineering.

Designing - The areas that are concentrated at this stage are representation of the flow of the process, alerts and the notifications, the factors present inside, the standard operating procedures, escalations and also the service level agreements.

The main aim of this step is to ensure that an efficient and a correct design is produced or prepared.

Modeling - The process of modeling takes all the theoretical designs and then introduces various combinations of all the variables. This determines the exact way in which all the processes might operate under the different circumstances.

Execution - Execution step executes all the required and essential steps of the business process management.

Monitoring - Monitoring represents the tracking of various individual processes so that all the information can be easily visible.

Optimization - The process optimization includes the retrieving the process from the phase of monitoring or modeling. It also includes identification of the potential of saving costs and also various other improvements.

Reengineering - When a particular process becomes more noisy and the user is not able to get the desire output, the process has to be reengineered. This step is used by businesses to achieve productivity and also efficiency.

The technology of Business process management is widely used as a technology as well. For example it is used in operational intelligence in order to deliver actionable and real time information. These real time decisions can in turn be used for a variety of other purposes which makes business process management all the more useful. This is the reasons that this process is viewed as a bridge between the businesses and the technology.

Business Process Improvement

The majority of business process improvements were developed in the manufacturing arena but the core techniques and principles remain transferable across most industries today.

Business process improvement focuses on ensuring that functions are done correctly, by reducing waste for example. We begin by defining the strategic objectives of an organisation, targeting the customers of that organisation and making the business processes in line with those objectives.

BPI tends to look at a radical change in the business performance rather than a slow change approach. Change is not intended to be trivial but rather a revolution. Re-engineering is a term often associated with these changes.

Businesses process improvement looks at the primary roles in a business, the management system, the business leader, the process owner, the operation manager and the process operator. Each has a unique set of responsibilities but all need to work together as a unit. The business leader creates the business plan which was devised through the strategic planning process. They communicate the the business plan through the organisation, they build communication bridges and remove barriers. They analyse the performance of the business and use management data to guide the business to ward its objectives.

Meanwhile the owner of the business process is the person who designs the processes necessary to achieve the objectives set out in the business plan that was created by the business leaders. They create and approve the documentation that supports the process. They are often supported in this work by the process improvement team. The starting point is to understand the customer requirements which translate into a set of metrics overseen by the operational managers and are commonly known as KPIs or key performance indicators. These are what measures that the customer requirements and expectations are being met.

The process operators analyses the performance data to review the performance of the process. They create performance improvement plans based on that performance data and this may include Lean practices to reduce waste such as Six Sigma. Improvement plans include risk analysis to identify problems within the process and mitigate against their consequences.

Meanwhile the operational manager brings resources and process together to deliver the targets set out in the business plan. This follows a classic plan, do, check and act cycle. Finally the process operator performs the work needed to achieve the objectives of the business plan again using the do, check and act cycle.

Processes need to be in line with business goals. Customer needs to be at the centre of business process improvement and results need to be regularly benchmarking to be able to measure improvement and progress.

Are There Risks With Business Process Outsourcing

One of the most attractive aspects of larger businesses is the ability to outsource some of the functions of daily business processes in order to save money. While this might make good financial sense instead of hiring new employees, there are also some risks with business process outsourcing.

When most companies are beginning or are growing, a lot of the processes of daily business are done in house in order to save money. Things like customer service, accounting, human relations, data management and more are often falling on the backs of a few employees. This saves money for the small business owner, however when the company begins to grow and expand, most business owners are faced with the decision of whether to hire new employees or seek outside specialist to handle certain aspects of the business.

Business process outsourcing (BPO) is the method that this is accomplished. While using an accountant do take care of taxes and payroll makes good sense, are there problems with outsourcing other aspects of your business?

One such risk with BPO is the risk to current employees. Unless you have one employee handling multiple tasks, will that employee or those employees have to be fired or laid off? Often times you can merge the employees into other aspects of the daily business model in order to keep those that are familiar with the company employed.

Another risky aspect is outsourcing the IT management of your company. If your company sends its data to a third party, can you ensure that it is secure from data breaches? What about other data? Can it be easily recovered and secured if you need it? Do you have a redundant backup plan in case of failure of your data and the outsourcing parties data?

There are many aspects to consider when outsourcing, these are just a couple of the bigger ones to consider. You can often tell when it is time to consider going outside of your business walls for support. Finding the right company to provide the services you need will take time and effort on your part, but the dividends will become more evident everyday.

Just Stop and Improve Taking Time Out to Ignite Business Process Improvement

Improving how a business operates is seen to many as a difficult, long winded and tiresome task. Others see it as a chance to stop, stand back and make some changes to their process in a very practical and immediate way; many business process improvements are simple, low cost and don't need to be intertwined with an overall 'lean manufacturing' programme. There is a continuum of improvements, and if we fantasise enough we can concoct ideas that will help our business to spend a large amount of money for not necessarily greater returns with respect to performance improvement. This article will focus on the opportunity before you to implement low cost / no cost simple ideas by simply taking a 'time out' from your day-to-day busyness.

However you choose to take a time out it is essential that you are open to ideas. Some will be great, some will be poor and some will be so far off the mark you will wonder if you and the person suggesting them are having the same conversation! That said, the ability to be flexible, get involved and enjoy the conversations around improvement can lead you off on all sorts of tangents that can eventually bring you full circle to a brilliant idea. The main point is that you need to be willing to take the time out to have this conversation and not feel under pressure to generate the next big idea.

Taking a time out is also a great way to get things off your chest with how a business process is operating. When we get upset with how a process is operating (and how others are operating their part of the process) and we declare this in the office then we are perceived as merely ranting. When we take a time out, in an official way, and others are party to this break to review what is going on, then getting things off your chest is productive. Of course the way that you offload your issues is critical to the success of the issues being discussed and worked, but I am sure that you get the point.

Having a clear focus when you take a time out is essential. An unclear period of time to discuss getting better can work but, in my experience, having a sense of clarity about why you are having a time out can make your time far more effective and productive. If you aren't sure of what you need to discuss then create a rota of topics and use that as a stimulation tool to create a focus that will serve your discussions. Many people who participate in continuous improvement conversations are unsure of why they are there and don't engage fully. Having a focus is one way around this and obviously can improve the results you can generate.

So if you are looking to improve a process in your business, be it a production or a service process, then consider scheduling some time outs to have the conversations. If you introduce certain tools such as mapping, nominal group technique and brainstorming you can make the sessions even better, but the key is to make the time in the first place. Find some people who have different perspectives and share your ideas. If you are looking for a rule of thumb to decide if your time outs are working then use this; the benefits you actually realise in your business need to outweigh the cost of running the meetings. In most businesses this is very easy to achieve, so why don't you plan your first 'time out' today?