BUSINESS PROCESS REENGINEERING

Business Process Reengineering

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Introduction3

1.1 An Overview3

1.2Context of the Study4

1.2.5 Research Questions7

1.2.6 Research Objectives7

1.2.7 Significance of the Research7

Chapter Two: The Review of the Related Literature7

2.1 Introduction7

2.2 Organizational Definitions and Concepts7

2.2.2 The Organization as an Open System7

2.2.3 Management of Change (35.P.357)7

2.2.8 Change Resistance7

2.2.9 Business Process7

2.2.9.2 Understanding Business Processes7

2.2.10 Business Process Reengineering (BPR)7

2.2.10.1 Drives for BPR Implementation7

2.5 BPR Success Stories7

2.7 Key Factors in BPR Success7

Relationship between BPR and Information technology (IT)7

2.11 Barriers to effective BPR Implementation7

Business Process Reengineering

Chapter 1: Introduction

"Reengineering has been a close partner of Information Technology (IT). Technology enables the processes that are the essence of reengineering to be redesigned. The two have a symbiotic relation: Without reengineering, information technology delivers little payoff; without information technology, little reengineering can be done" (Hammer and Champy, (1993, p.5) "Reengineering the Corporation".

1.1 An Overview

Business Process Reengineering (BPR), with IT as an enabler, was used to improve the Student Information Systems (IS) at the Jubail Industrial College (JIC) of Saudi Arabia dramatically and to modernize a part of the college that needs to adapt to the rapidly changing nature of education in the country. Previously, SIS procedures at JIC were inefficient, full of duplications and frequently processing inaccurate information about staff, courses, students and other college facilities. Furthermore, increases in student enrolment at JIC made SIS procedures an ineffective way of dealing with the increasing demands in college programs and industrial training. There was also a shortage of staff to deal with the SIS manually. Therefore, change was necessary and BPR a means of effecting such change since its author claim that in Western countries it was a means of radical redesign of business processes to achieve dramatic improvement in critical, contemporary measures of performance, such as cost, quality, service and speed (Hammer and Champy, 1993, p 32)

Despite BPR being an important strategy of the 90s (O'Brien 1997, p 348; Choi and Chan 1997, p. 39) and making significant improvements in many renowned companies such as IBM, Ford, Kodak, Hewlett-Packard and Taco Bell (Khong and Richardson 2003, p. 57), it retains a high rate of failure (Abdolvand, et al. 2008, p. 498). There are also limitations in existing BPR methodologies including a lack of a systematic approach, failure to incorporate a diagnostic stage before redesign and no standardization to give consistency throughout various models (Valiris and Glyka, 1999, pp.75-76). Additionally, reengineering is used less in the public than the private sector (Ahmad et al. 2007, p. 452), particularly in educational institutions such as JIC. Therefore, it was seen a good opportunity to implement this innovative concept at JIC and maybe generalize it for the rest if it is succeeded.

However, senior management at JIC used it hesitantly and limited BPR's first reengineering initiative into the college SIS rather than immediately incorporating it fully. This would allow further assessment and understanding of BPR before using it further for other JIC reengineering projects. In doing so, this thesis will have two stages to its empirical research, which a literature review will ...