BUSINESS PROCESS RE-ENGINEERING AND CHANGE MANAGEMENT

Business Process Re-engineering and Change Management: Everything You Need to Know

Business process re-engineering acts as a catalyst for business models. It can turn things upside down for organizations

Business process re-engineering acts as a catalyst for business models. It can turn things upside down for organizations that have not been able to increase their profit.

BPR pushes the ongoing processes in achieving the efficiency related to cost, quality, profit, and output.

It is a systematic and disciplined methodology that encourages the need for removing the processes that are not creating value for the customers.

Steps Involved in BPR about Change Management

Change management, as the name describes itself, it means the administration related to the changes that have taken place.

Change management is people-oriented as it studies the effects brought by the change.

It ensures the readiness of the staff as well as their behaviour to accept the new changes and moving forward with it.

Following are the steps involved in BPR about the involvement of change management:

Team Assembling

This step includes the inclusion of team members that will work together to measure the extent to which change management achieves success.

The team is entrusted with the goals and tasks that an organization wants to accomplish.

Identifying each goal acts as a report for the team related to the achievements made so far.

Since the BPR team is entrusted with many responsibilities, a small team is included to assist in change management.

Teams that experience major change initiatives are termed as transition management teams.

New Directions for the Organization

It is the second step in change management, ensuring the directions in which organizations should move.

The mission statement is responsible for pushing the organization towards being process-oriented.

Most of these cover topics like company product and services, market, company objectives, etc.

Also Read: What are the Steps to Implement Business Process Reengineering?

Preparing for Change

This step talks about preparing the organization for the change.

Bringing the change in the existing process of the organization is not a cakewalk.

An organization should duly communicate the need for change at every level of the organization.

It has to be made clear to the employees at every level as to why it is needed and the effects of not adopting it.

Aspects of these communications should cover below-mentioned points:

  • Facts should be presented instead of values.
  • Direct communication is always better.
  • Educating front-line supervisors as they are actively required for implementing change.

Facts cover the points like the effect of the change on costs, speed, quality, customer service, etc.

Direct communication with supervisors ensures that they are introduced to the urgency and the after-effects of the new process in the organization.

Educating front-line workers will be in the best interest of the organizations as it will encourage them to clear their doubts at any level.

Implementing Change With the Help of Team

Teams are formed by the BPR team leader for implementing changes.

These teams are change teams, commonly referred to as re-engineering teams.

Each team is guided by a process owner who helps in the successful implementation of the change process.

This team involves members from multiple departments of the organization.

The team members need to be knowledgeable as well as responsible for handling any effects that arise because of the change process.

Alignment of Systems to Support the Change Process

To implement the change process, checking of existing systems and structures is needed.

This is done to ensure that there are least disruptions during the implementation of change processes.

The focus in BPR is completely on making the existing systems and structures into being process-oriented.

Being process-oriented means that there will be fewer hierarchy levels.

The change management team should work with the BPR team to drive the organizations towards success even after they have been given enough autonomy to work on their own.

Identifying the Issues in Implementing the Change Process

Implementing the change process without any resistance is difficult.

The re-engineering team suggests a lot of changes that create a lot of roadblocks in implementing it.

The change management team here is trusted with the responsibility of clearing such roadblocks. This will lead to the completion of the modifications suggested by re-engineering teams.

It becomes necessary at this stage to educate the ones resisting changes. They need to be understood about the need for implementing changes in organizations.

Top-level management is expected to act here as an example for implementing changes.

Absorbing Changes in Organizational Culture

The whole motive of change is to be effective in many aspects as quality, cost, and being customer-centric.

This could well be achieved if the change process implemented is internalized. Also, it needs to be made a mandatory practice in organizations.

Organizational culture plays an important role in making employees identify themselves as a part of the process.

By this, the employees are considered responsible for the entire process and not only for a particular job or function.

Their reward system and appraisals are thus according to their involvement in the process.

All this, in turn, results in better efficiency.

Conclusion:

Change management ensures the success of the organization by introducing a whole lot of new processes.

But there may be resistance from the employees for implementing changes. This can well be eliminated by the involvement of top-level and mid-level management.

Also Read: Principles of Business Process Re-Engineering Explained

About Jason Hoffman

I am the Director of Sales and Marketing at Wisdomplexus, capturing market share with E-mail marketing, Blogs and Social media promotion. I spend major part of my day geeking out on all the latest technology trends like artificial intelligence, machine learning, deep learning, cloud computing, 5G and many more. You can read my opinion in regards to these technologies via blogs on our website.