Sometimes, a business process simply isn’t tenable. No matter what you try to do with improvements and initiatives, it won’t respond how you want. In scenarios like this, it can be difficult to think of a solid method of recourse. Business process reengineering is a drastic means of completely redesigning a business process from the ground up. When done properly, you’re achieving the same sort of goals you’re anticipating from a previous process, but built with speed, quality, and efficiency at its heart.

Now, it might seem like BPR is a more drastic means of improvement. You might want to chuck that notion away, however, as you aren’t tweaking an existing process or making adjustments. Business process reengineering means that you’re starting entirely from scratch, designing a process as if you were just starting from the beginning. Let’s take a closer look at what it means, and why you’ll want to use it.

Why Business Process Reengineering Matters

So, why do businesses make use of BPR? Reengineering processes can have certain advantages, especially for companies that have been operating for some time. A complete overhaul of a process can see a reduction of redundant work, lower overhead, and greater overall efficiency on the whole. From a cost perspective, this adds up quickly.

It also has the added benefits of reducing bottlenecks, as these often accumulate with ease when doing any sort of work. Processes have the space to move faster, meaning you’re shipping out deliverables at a much faster clip for your customers.

One of the big reasons to pursue any sort of process reengineering is where quality is concerned. Errors can mount fast when a process has been left unchecked for long enough. Curtailing this only increases quality, resulting in fewer defects and errors for your goods and services as they make their way to customers.

Core Principles

A few core principles guide any BPR initiative. While we won’t walk through a typical BPR effort just yet, it is certainly worth outlining what it means and why you’ll want to pursue it for any sort of unruly processes.

Processes, Not Tasks

Isolated tasks can seem to be operating at optimal conditions. This isn’t reflective of the whole of a process, however. You don’t want to hone in on single elements of a process, but the end-to-end flow of work. A task might operate perfectly well on its own, but it can be poorly implemented, meaning a loss of efficiency or other significant problems if left unattended.

Clean Slate

The status quo for any business can be a rather insidious thing. You might ask around about processes and be told that’s the way things have always been done. Buck the trend and question if the process can be done better. It isn’t enough to perform. You want to perform well when considering speed, quality, and cost. Errors add up, and the way things have always been done might be bleeding money, whereas starting from a clean slate is going to enable you to reap the benefits of a freshly designed process.

Emphasize Customer Needs

The ultimate goal for any business is to continue delivering value and quality to your customers. How you achieve those aims is going to be dependent on your business and industry. Common ways of increasing value through reengineering can be seen as faster service, lower prices, or exceeding customer expectations for a given product’s quality.

Technology As an Enabler

Technology isn’t just a band-aid for an existing process, but rather a whole means of supporting your newly designed one. It shouldn’t act as a patch for a faulty means of doing things, but instead should be designed with technology in mind from the very start.

Involve Stakeholders Early

Your employees, managers, and customers can offer valuable feedback as to what isn’t working in your current processes. Involving your stakeholders early in the reengineering process is going to yield far better results than attempting to fly solo and rectify things based on data.

The BPR Process

So, how do you go about starting a business process reengineering effort? There are a few practical strategies you can implement to get things up and rolling. We’ll go through things step-by-step, so you can see what’s in store.

Identify Processes

Finding a solid starting point is going to be your best bet. Candidates for ideal processes are going to be customer-facing, cost-effective, and prone to errors. You’ll want to sort these out by the level of customer complaints, the cycle time, resource intensity, and the potential financial impact of mistakes or rework.

Prioritizing processes is going to be a matter of sorting out which have the highest level of impact on your organization. Those that are easily quantifiable and visible to your stakeholders are ideal choices.

As-Is Mapping

Getting a clear, unbiased view of how things are working is going to be instrumental for reengineering. A flowchart for each action, handoff, and every other element is going to be vital for understanding exactly what is going wrong. Metrics like time per step, error rates, and number of approvals are important to gather.

Input from your employees, like front-line workers and managers, can help to gain a clearer understanding of how processes work and where they’re failing. Keep an eye out for pain points, as you’ll need these for the next few steps.

Rethink and Redesign

Challenge every step of your process as you begin shaping. Do things need to be done this way? You might consider applying the 3 Es: eliminating steps that don’t add value, enabling or providing the tools and training to make things flow more efficiently, and enhancing steps that must remain.

Leverage Technology

Modern technology is something you should be using with any process, as it helps to eliminate some of the more tedious steps and tasks for any process. Business process reengineering means you’ll want to focus on areas like automating repetitive tasks or integrating systems to maintain data flow integrity. Technology isn’t just a handy means of making things easier for the average person, but it can also greatly enhance your processes for the better.

Implement Changes

Before you introduce your process to the workflow, you’ll want to pilot it. Using it solely in a single department or a group, and providing adequate training, is going to minimize the potential for disruptions across the board. Employee buy-in is going to be key here, so make sure you communicate the why behind these decisions. Take the time to track your early results as well, in the event of unexpected issues in the initial weeks during its introduction.

Monitor and Refine

Implementing a new process is going to be a tenuous period. You’ll want to monitor the key metrics like cycle time, error rate, and cost savings. Check in with employees regularly to see how things are going with the newly implemented process, to make sure your business process reengineering efforts are going as they should. Following this, you can make minor improvements and tweaks, as part of committing to continuous improvement.

Other Useful Tools and Concepts

Looking to start your work week right? You might want to take a closer look at what exactly it entails to become a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt. These problem solvers are a vital part of any organization, and can act as a vital mentor for your personnel.

Additionally, you might want to take a closer look at how Six Sigma can figure into software development. We often think of software development as using Agile or other methodologies, but Six Sigma makes for an ideal solution.

Conclusion

Business process reengineering is a vital means of overhauling your faulty processes. Hopefully, you come away with a broader understanding of why you’ll want to go through such a drastic initiative. BPR can mean overhauling processes for the better,