Re-engineering Business Processes
Internally, the delivery of products and services to customers is the end result of coordinated activities by different groups working within the organisation. The natural tendency is towards specialisation and complexity which can re-enforce the feeling of working in functional silos. Business process reengineering looks across functional boundaries. Organisations are also hierarchical, while the transactions and work-flows that provide services and products to customers take a path through the business. The traditional structure causes managers to put functional needs above those of the multi‑functional processes to which their departments contribute. But when the natural variation of any process leads to errors it is easy to blame others rather than cross the functional boundaries and resolve problems by working together. Business process reengineering is about fixing the process failures rather than allocating blame. But if we start with the belief that people want to do a good job and take pride in what they do then we can tap into a huge reservoir of knowledge about what things are going wrong and the many ways of fixing them. The key is to work with the people on 'the system' in which they work. Business process reengineering is about using tools and techniques to aid the improvement. Working with a client team we 'walk the key processes' to identify issues and failures and draw the process map to illustrate its complexity. We facilitate problem-solving across all functions then redesign processes to deliver an improved service at lower unit cost. We work with the client team to design the detail and help in final implementation of the changes. Business process reengineering can result in many radical solutions that break through years of suffering intractable barriers.