What is Business Process Reengineering? Key Steps Explained

Business process reengineering is a management strategy that helps to bring changes and improvements to a business. Business process reengineering’s primary focus is to help numerous organisations to work on various factors. This will help organisations to improve customer service and increase business profitability. It recreates and designs the business process to enhance the product’s quality, increase productivity, and make the products cost-friendly.  

There are various organisations worldwide that have faced intense competition after the impact of the pandemic. These organisations took different steps in order to increase their efficiency and improve productivity through business process reengineering. With the business process management industry experiencing rapid growth in market revenue globally, its implementation across organisations is apparent. 

Let’s dive in to learn all about business process reengineering!

Top 5 Advantages of Implementing Business Process Reengineering 

Here are some of the advantages of business process reengineering listed below: 

• Reduces Cost 

Reducing the cost and wastage of a product or service is one of the goals of business reengineering. It is one of the modern methods that help organisations to identify the material and equipment that contribute to waste in the organisation. Therefore, BPR helps to save costs by minimising wastage and unnecessary expenses. 

• Improves quality of product 

It is business reengineering that helps organisations satisfy customers’ needs and wants efficiently and effectively. They focus on improving the quality of the product and services. It allows organisations to redesign their processes, which helps them to work and improve on the areas they were lacking previously. 

• Increase Efficiency   

Business process reengineering enables companies to increase efficiency by assimilating innovative trends within the organisation. This makes companies function with maximum efficiency. It also eliminates the wastage of time and allows companies to increase their profitability.  

• Adoption of New Technology 

Business reengineering helps companies to switch from old technologies to new ones. Adopting new technologies can help deliver better service to the customers, acknowledging the market innovations and needs. 

• Builds Brand Image 

Business process reengineering helps to build a solid brand image. It provides strategic ideas to the organisation to gain customer loyalty and reduce organisational complexity. Business reengineering ensures organisations deliver products or services with higher quality in order to build a better brand image and reputation.   

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Top 5 Challenges of Implementing Business Process Reengineering 

As we have discussed the benefits of business process reengineering, here are some of the challenges of applying BPR. 

• Lack of Clear Goal 

One of the common challenges of applying business process reengineering is the lack of clear goals. An organisation needs clarity about what they want to accomplish, so it becomes easier to analyse and measure its success. 

• Lack of Management Support 

One of the reasons behind the failure of business process reengineering is the lack of management support. If the management does not support and allow the new changes, it becomes challenging to involve the employees. 

• Lack of Resources  

Implementing a business process reengineering program requires essential resources like funding and time. It is difficult to make changes when there are insufficient resources and a tight deadline.

• Lack of Technological Competence 

Initiating desired changes without technical competencies is a frequently faced complexity in BPR. But despite these challenges, numerous companies have successfully applied business process reengineering.  

• Lack of employee support 

The support and involvement of employees are essential to implement business process reengineering. Lack of employee support and suggestions can direct stale ideas to be implemented, leading to unimpressive results. 

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Important Business Process Reengineering Steps

Here are some business process reengineering steps that can help transform your organisation: 

STEP 1: Identify the Need for Change

Identifying the need for change in an organisation is the first step towards process reengineering. The moment you understand what outcome you want from your business, you start working towards it with well-informed steps. For instance, you want to work on the timeframe of home deliveries to the customers. Here, you should look for ways to manage your time right from the stage of product procurement to accomplishing a successful delivery to the customer. Seek answers to the most fundamental questions regarding your organisation and compare them with your final goals to take relevant measures for reaching them. 

Step 2: Build a Team of Experts  

With the right skills and experience, a team of experts can assist business process reengineering towards success. Here’s what a team to manage BPR might look like.

Senior Manager: Responsible for supervision and all the informed decisions to reinforce business process reengineering.

Operational Manager: Responsible for managing internal activities with a BPR team, providing the members with the proper guidance to follow a path using innovative methods and skills. 

Reengineering Experts: Responsible for analysing and implementing reengineering techniques to business processes with expertise in relevant tools and methods.

Step 3: Choosing the Process to Reengineer

Business process reengineering is unsuitable for all businesses. If you require a change in your business, you should know what needs to be changed. In order to choose the right reengineering method, map out the current stance and desired objectives. After mapping out a well-engineered plan, you can identify and fill the gaps accordingly. 

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Step 4: Mapping the Reengineering Process

Create a blueprint for your estimated goals, with each of its stages elaborated in depth. Mapping out a plan simplifies identifying occurring issues, saving time and effort on unnecessarily wasted processes. Mapping makes complicated workflows more straightforward and accessible.

Step 5: Reengineering Management 

In the process of reengineering, you create a plan, adopt new changes and provide solutions to the problem in order to improve. It is when you redesign all the ideas and increase a business’s productivity. You create a new workflow and strategies to help a business achieve its goals and objectives. It also helps set high standards to enhance activities and accomplish goals. 

Step 6: Consistent Sharing of Feedback and Audit 

Feedback sharing is the crucial aspect of any dynamic project management process, which guides and gives a suitable shape to any operation during its development stage. Audit the BPR process to evaluate its competence and the potential drawbacks to estimate its eventual impact on the final result. It’s a cost-effective way to ensure efficiency and high quality in your business model. 

Roles and Responsibilities of Business Process Reengineering Team Members

Business process reengineering requires a team of experienced industry professionals managing relevant roles and responsibilities within the process. Here are all the positions. 

• Team leader  

A team leader in business process reengineering is a senior executive who has authorisation over reengineering efforts. The team leader recruits the process owner and supervises the development stages. 

• Process Owner 

The process owner is the senior manager of the business process. It is the responsibility of the process owner to assemble the team to reengineer the particular process.

• Reengineering Team 

The reengineering team refers to a group of people that work on a particular process that has to be reengineered. This group of people ensure maximum implementation of their expertise with complex tools and methods to optimise revamped business models.

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• Steering Committee 

A steering committee is a group of senior-level managers who are experts in reengineering. This committee sets various goals in order to improve a particular performance. A steering committee is also responsible for helping process owners in the decision-making process. 

• Reengineering Czar 

A reengineering czar is an individual who manages daily reengineering activities. These individuals are responsible for developing different tools and techniques for the organisation.  

Conclusion 

Every organisation requires a business process reengineering. It helps organisations to achieve their goals and objectives by improving customer service and increasing business profitability. In today’s time, every organisation requires change and improvement in their businesses to keep up with trends and assimilate innovations. 

If you want to gain more knowledge about businesses and how to implement business process reengineering, you can opt for upGrad. With courses like Golden Gate University’s Master of Business Administration, you can gain deep knowledge and understanding of business process reengineering. It is a 15-month course where you get the opportunity to learn from industry leaders and achieve lucrative opportunities in the industry.