In 1990s, Dr. michael hammer, a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and James Champy, the chairman of CSC index consulting company, put forward the Bushiness Process Reengineering in order to explore the reasons for the backwardness of American automobile technology and learn from Japanese experience. According to the definition of Hammer and Champy, "Business Process Reengineering is a fundamental rethinking and thorough redesign of an enterprise's business process, in order to obtain a great improvement in cost, quality, service and speed", so that the enterprise can adapt to the modern business environment characterized by "customers, competition and change" to the maximum extent. As a brand-new revolutionary theory of enterprise management, "process reengineering" contains two basic ideas: first, organizations must identify which processes are critical and make them as concise and effective as possible; Second, we must discard trivial things (including dispensable people in the enterprise). Obviously, BPR's transformation of enterprises is comprehensive and thorough. Only by grasping the business process of the enterprise, taking the process transformation as the core, and then thoroughly transforming the strategy, organization, management, personnel and concept of the enterprise in turn, can it be called enterprise reengineering. This means starting from the root of things, don't make superficial changes to existing things, but throw away the old ones and break and reorganize the existing system. In this way, the improvement of enterprise process and performance can be greatly improved, and the new life of the enterprise can be ushered in.
Process reengineering is to meet the needs of different customers for quality, speed, novelty, standardization and service through the great improvement of process. Hammer pointed out that the implementation of process reengineering must conform to seven principles. These principles involve working hours, places and performers, as well as information collection and integration.
Principle 1: Re-engineering around the final result rather than specific tasks.
The work originally done by different professionals should be combined into one job, which should be completed by a salesman or working group. The generated new work should include all steps and have clear output. Reengineering around the final result saves the transmission process, thus speeding up the speed, improving efficiency and responding to customer changes quickly.
Principle 2: Let the relevant personnel of the subsequent process participate in the previous process.
It is most meaningful to adopt the principle of proximity to carry out work. This leads to a process to be completed by the person who knows him best. Thereby breaking the traditional boundaries within and between departments.
Principle 3. Integrate information processing into the actual work of generating information.
Information collectors should be responsible for information processing, so that the work of others in processing and coordinating this information can be minimized. By reducing the external contact points of the process, the error is greatly reduced.
Principle 4. Concentrate geographically dispersed resources.
Information technology makes it possible to combine decentralized management with centralized management. He decentralized the different departments that completed the unified work to promote the realization of the work and improve the overall control of the company.
Principle 5. Connect parallel processes instead of integrating their results.
Simply summarizing the results that parallel processes will eventually come together will inevitably lead to repeated work, high cost and delay the progress of the whole process. In the process of reengineering, these parallel processes should be continuous and coordinated.
Principle 6. Move the decision point down and integrate control into the process.
Decision-making should be part of the job. It is not impossible for a well-educated and knowledgeable employee to engage in decision-making activities with the help of decision support technology. Control has become a part of this process, and the vertical compression it produces has formed a flatter and more responsive company.
Principle 7. Get information from the source.
Use the company's online information system to collect and obtain information at the source of information at one time, so as to avoid information input errors and high cost of information re-acquisition.
The basic principles of business process reengineering listed above are all based on the innovative application of information technology. By using information technology and network technology, we can simplify the complicated and tedious workflow previously formulated to adapt to manual or mechanical work, so that customers can respond quickly and accurately to changes in the quality, speed, novelty and standardization of products or services, thus adapting to the rapidly changing market environment.
In the process of implementing process reengineering, the target content of performance improvement may be different for different enterprises. Some enterprises pursue low cost, while others pursue speed and quality. But at the same time, we should also pay attention to the non-traditional performance improvement goal of enterprise innovation in the process of facilitation.
No matter what the goal of performance improvement is in the process of business process reengineering, the four elements concerned in the framework of business process reengineering will directly affect the realization of the above goals. As shown in figure 1, the business process reengineering framework mainly analyzes enterprise culture, people, processes, organizational systems and IT, and carries out enterprise transformation to achieve enterprise goals.
Information technology plays an important role in creating, transmitting and managing information, and is in a supporting and basic position in the whole framework. In the past ten years, with the rapid development of information technology, many information technology tools have been produced to assist enterprises in business process reengineering and performance improvement. The development of information technology provides technical support for new management ideas, such as total quality management (TQM), just-in-time production (JIT), agile manufacturing (AM), enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM). It is important to make the application of these management innovation theories in enterprises become a reality. Today, more and more enterprises have realized that in order to achieve their business goals, they must constantly strengthen the application of information technology and adopt appropriate information technology solutions to carry out all-round changes in enterprises.
The application of information technology in enterprise management focuses on the informationization of business processes. The core content of business process reengineering also focuses on corporate culture and people, processes, organizational systems and information technology. These four aspects interact, especially the foundation and support of information technology.
The application of information technology in enterprise product development ensures the technological advancement of enterprises in high-tech fields, and the application of information technology in enterprise management ensures that enterprises stand at the forefront of management and adapt to the ever-changing process and environment in the new economic era.
However, the innovation and improvement of process can not be realized only by innovative information technology. Technology is only the carrier to realize process reengineering. After five years' research, Jim Collins, an American management guru, pointed out in From Excellence to Excellence that "technology is an accelerator of development power, not a creator". No matter how perfect the process design is, the work is done by someone. As Buffalo Buffalo coach Marv Levy said, "It's not the tactics that win the game, but the players." Richard Chandler, CEO of Sunrise Pharmaceutical Company, said: "The only difference between us lies in our employees and what is in their minds. The most important investment is to educate employees, enrich their knowledge and stimulate their fighting spirit. "
At present, the core management idea of the popular enterprise resource planning (ERP) is to realize the effective management of the whole supply chain. However, ERP has almost been accompanied by the shadow of failure since its birth. Even in the United States, the failure rate of ERP is high; Even a world-class company like Dell, after spending a huge sum of $200 million and two years of hard work, announced the cancellation of its ERP system. Then, how to avoid risks and effectively solve many problems in the process of ERP implementation is a problem that enterprises are very confused at present and must plan ahead.
As the founder of BPR thought pointed out, the application of computer technology is. Go astray. The application of ERP is not only to introduce a set of modern management software to automate the daily management activities of enterprises, but also to fundamentally change the traditional management mode of enterprises, making it more reasonable and scientific, thus greatly improving the operating efficiency of enterprises.
In fact, in the process of implementing ERP, enterprises often encounter the problem of inconsistency between system and system thinking. At this time, there are usually two choices: modify the system to meet the requirements of the enterprise system, or transform the enterprise system to meet the requirements of the system. At this time, there can only be one victim: either a rigid enterprise or a failed computer system.
The secret of the long-term success of enterprises lies in their unique and consistent corporate executive culture, people, processes and organizational systems. The real secret of Dell's success lies in its tailor-made service, first-class execution level and close attention to cost, which are his unparalleled advantages. The reason why Dell can still beat other competitors in the case of slowing down the growth of the PC industry is because it has a good executive culture and can implement every link.
In a word, process reengineering is a management idea, and information technology is a technology; Process reengineering can exist independently of information technology; Information technology has played a good catalytic role in the transformation of process reengineering from concept to reality.