Six misunderstandings about BPR of business proces

Six misunderstandings about business process reengineering (BPR)

in recent years, state-owned enterprises have been constantly seeking answers on the road of reform: from total quality management (TQM), just in time production (JIT), lean manufacturing (Lean Manufacturing) to supply chain management (SCM). Some large state-owned enterprises and private enterprises are taking greater steps, trying to be in line with international standards in terms of business model and process management, and striving to become world-class enterprises. For example, some large power and telecommunications enterprises hope to conduct internal reshuffle by introducing international management concepts. In this way, business process reengineering (BPR) seems to be the sword of enterprise reform, because the characteristic of BPR is to change the basic business processes and organizational structure of enterprises, simplify redundant personnel, and enable enterprises to achieve significant improvements in cost, quality, service and speed. However, BPR is not omnipotent. The high failure rate fully shows that the success of BPR depends entirely on the characteristics and implementation methods of the enterprise itself, otherwise it is likely to "lift a stone and hit yourself in the foot". Our research found that Chinese enterprises are prone to six misunderstandings in the process of BPR planning and implementation

myth 1: BPR is a panacea

since BPR became popular in American enterprises in the first half of the 1990s, people firmly believe that they have found a panacea that can solve the actual problems of enterprises. Michael Hammer and James Cham, the founders of business process reengineering (BPR), said that BPR is "Fundamentally rethink and thoroughly redesign the business process of the enterprise, so as to obtain significant improvements in the performance in terms of cost, quality, service and speed, so that the enterprise can maximize the adaptability of the modern enterprise business environment characterized by 'customers, competition and change'"

the original intention of American enterprises to implement BPR is to reduce staff and increase efficiency, so that enterprises can reduce costs, and achieve flexible and rapid response to the market by cultivating their internal skills. However, when BPR is imported into China, enterprises always hope to solve as many problems as possible in the process of their own development, such as cultivating high-quality front-line marketing team, improving business income, expanding market share and improving the return on investment. In fact, the realization of each of the above goals can not be achieved by BPR alone. Taking the improvement of business income as an example, in the face of increasingly fierce and even disordered market competition, even if the internal business process itself is more scientific and efficient, and there is no strong industry standard guarantee and high-quality talents suitable for the job need to work steadily, the improvement of business income of the enterprise will still be difficult. In addition, the upgrading of technology and the impact of the political and economic environment at home and abroad can not be controlled through BPR reform

Myth 2: BPR can bring immediate results to enterprises

because BPR reform involves significantly changing the overall organizational structure of enterprises, adjusting traditional business operation processes, and even thoroughly designing new business processes or deleting inefficient old processes, the implementation of BPR often involves changing the fundamental operation norms of enterprises and the responsibilities, rights, and interests of each employee. The state-owned enterprises that can make up their minds to implement BPR are often large-scale enterprises with good benefits and facing fierce market competition. In the face of the high investment in BPR reform and large-scale internal organizational changes, as well as the urgent situation of market changes, enterprise leaders often place high hopes on this reform, hoping that this investment can bring immediate results as soon as possible, such as the growth of business income. However, this high expectation just goes against the characteristics of BPR reform, that is, through combing the internal business operation process of the enterprise, we can get through the meridians, so that the body of the enterprise can grow healthily through its own adjustment to meet the needs of the market environment. The process of recovering the health of enterprises is not achieved overnight, and painful shocks will inevitably occur in the process of medication, and the running in of the new mechanism will take time. Therefore, the process of BPR reform is a kind of internal cultivation of enterprises, and a subtle change. Its dominant effects, such as the growth of business income and the expansion of market share, generally need two to three years of market testing to truly reflect

myth 3: pay more attention to design than implementation

because BPR is a fundamental rethinking and thorough redesign of enterprise business processes, many enterprises have invested heavily and the best teams to carry out scheme design, and have hired experts from excellent consulting companies at home and abroad to participate in scheme design. But they all ignored the most important point, that is, excellent reform plans must rely on strong implementation and strict implementation to truly blossom and bear fruit and achieve the expected design effect; Otherwise, no matter how beautiful the plan is, if it is not implemented correctly, it will only be a flower in the water and in the mirror. Among them, change management is the key to affecting the ideological transformation and behavior correction of enterprises. It is often necessary to put aside process design and deepen "ideological design" to maintain the organizational power of BPR

myth 4: it technology replaces the implementation of BPR

nowadays, many enterprises regard whether to establish a strong it support system as the symbol of the success of BPR implementation, that is, after the restructured business process is solidified through the IT system, the whole enterprise will be like a high-speed machine, running exactly along the established procedures. But in fact, the success of BPR reform depends more on the ideological transformation and subjective initiative of personnel. As the German entrepreneur Robert Newman said, "the biggest resistance for enterprises to implement BPR projects is the inertia of people at the start of the project". It can be seen that the key to the success or failure of implementing BPR depends on the overall quality of internal personnel and the determination to implement change. Senior leaders should have the spirit of innovation and courage to challenge risks; As the supervisor of the business executive level, the middle-level manager must fully mobilize the enthusiasm and sense of work of employees, supplemented by a scientific assessment system and incentive mechanism, so that employees can do their own work well on the premise of focusing on the overall business process. Only by truly changing employees' ideas, cultivating and improving employees' quality and business skills, supplemented by it support system, can we truly improve enterprise efficiency and speed up market response. In particular, domestic enterprises should be wary of companies with the title of "first 1 is generally 13 (3) 2; advanced IT technology level", trying to solve management problems for many years by installing new systems

myth 5: once and for all

many of the reforms carried out by enterprises in the past were as a movement, a vigorous start and a vigorous conclusion. Similarly, BPR reform is also regarded by many enterprises as a key work for a period of time. When certain results are received or short-term results are not visible, they will withdraw their troops hastily. This is one of the reasons why BPR has not achieved the desired effect in many enterprises. In fact, they all ignored a very important feature of BPR reform, that is, continuous improvement. As mentioned above, BPR reform is a kind of internal cultivation of enterprises, and it is impossible to achieve immediate results. Similarly, since it is to cultivate internal skills and involves all aspects of the enterprise, it is to a large extent a process from quantitative change to qualitative change. Therefore, we must take BPR as a regular management work of the enterprise through phased continuous improvement, so as to understand the essence of BPR and build a stable and long-term basic platform for improving the comprehensive competitiveness of the enterprise

myth 6: the completion of internal organizational restructuring

when an enterprise implements business process restructuring, it will inevitably involve a series of hot issues of organizational restructuring, such as post adjustment, position change, authority change and so on. This makes the implementation of BPR much more difficult. For example, a domestic Southern chemical group spent most of its time on personnel arrangement and adjustment during the two-year business process reorganization, and naively believed that BPR would be basically implemented as long as the human problem was solved. In fact, this seriously violates the core concept of BPR - by focusing everyone's attention on process transformation and using process based performance management system to achieve personnel in place; We should not rely on "pacifying people" or resolving personnel conflicts to restructure the process. The reorganization of customer process, production process, R & D process, human capital process, information collection and analysis process, financial reporting process and other aspects cannot be achieved by "adjusting the team". Other parts are completely consistent with EU standard 1 (end)