BPR is not necessary, you can go to ERP system without BPR. However, the system with improved business processes will be more streamlined and more valuable.
The following are some explanations about these two concepts for your reference.
First, the concept and history of ERP
ERP- Enterprise Resource Planning Enterprise resource planning system refers to a management platform based on information technology and providing decision-making operation means for enterprise decision makers and employees with systematic management ideas. ERP system integrates information technology and advanced management ideas, and becomes the operation mode of modern enterprises, which embodies the requirements of the times for enterprises to rationally allocate resources and create social wealth to the maximum, and becomes the cornerstone for enterprises to survive and develop in the information age.
Further, we can define it from three aspects: management thought, software products and management system:
1. is a set of enterprise management system standards put forward by Garter Group Inc, a famous American computer technology consulting and evaluation group. Its essence is a supply chain-oriented management idea that is further developed on the basis of MRP II ("Manufacturing Resource Planning").
2. It is a software product that comprehensively applies the achievements of information industry such as client/server system, relational database structure, object-oriented technology, graphical user interface, the fourth generation language (4GL), network communication and so on. And take ERP management thought as the soul;
3. It is an enterprise resource management system integrating enterprise management concepts, business processes, basic data, manpower and material resources, computer software and hardware.
Specifically, the relationship between ERP and enterprise resources, the role of ERP and the development of information technology can be expressed as follows:
1. Enterprise resources and ERP
Factory buildings, production lines, processing equipment, testing equipment, transportation tools, etc. They are all hardware resources of enterprises, while manpower, management, reputation, financing ability, organizational structure and employees' labor enthusiasm are all software resources of enterprises. In the business development of enterprises, these resources interact with each other to form the basis for enterprises to carry out production activities, complete customer orders, create social wealth and realize enterprise value, which reflects the position of enterprises in competitive development.
The management object of ERP system is the above resources and production factors. Through the use of ERP, the production process of enterprises can complete customers' orders in time and with high quality, give full play to the role of these resources, and make decisions to adjust resources according to customers' orders and production conditions.
2. Adjust the use of enterprise resources
An important sign of enterprise development is the reasonable adjustment and utilization of the above resources. Without modern management tools such as ERP, the enterprise resource situation and adjustment direction are not clear, and it is quite difficult to make adjustment arrangements, and the adjustment process will be quite long. The organizational structure of enterprises can only be pyramid-shaped, and the cooperation and communication between departments are weak, so it is difficult to grasp the operation of resources and make adjustments. The development of information technology, especially the ERP system designed for enterprise resource management, is designed to solve these problems. Successful implementation will make enterprises make better use of resources.
3. The stage development process of the role of information technology in resource management
The development of computer technology, especially the development of database technology, plays an inestimable role in establishing management information systems and even changing management ideas. The development of management thought and information technology is a mutually causal cycle. Practice has proved that information technology plays an increasingly important role in enterprise management.
The initial application of information technology in management is also very simple, mainly to record some data for easy query and summary, but now it has developed into a transnational and cross-enterprise operating system based on the global Internet, which can be divided into the following stages:
A.MIS system stage (management information system)
Enterprise information management system mainly records a large number of original data, and supports query and summary.
B.MRP stage (material requirements planning)
The information management system of an enterprise manages the product composition, and with the help of the computing power of the computer and the management ability of the system to customer orders, inventory materials and product composition, the material demand plan is formulated and calculated according to the customer orders and product structure list. Achieve the management objectives of reducing inventory and optimizing inventory.
C.MRP stage (manufacturing resource planning)
On the basis of MRP management system, the system adds the management of enterprise production center, processing hours and production capacity, thus realizing the function of computer production scheduling, including financial function, forming a closed-loop management system with computer as the core in the enterprise, which has been able to dynamically monitor the whole production process of production, supply and sales.
D.ERP phase (enterprise resource planning)
After entering the ERP stage, the enterprise-level management system with computer as the core is more mature, and the system has added functions including financial forecasting, production capacity, resource scheduling adjustment and so on. Cooperate with enterprises to realize JIT management comprehensive, quality management, production resource scheduling management and decision-making assistance. Become a platform tool for enterprises to carry out production management and decision-making.
E. ERP in the era of e-commerce
The maturity of internet technology has increased the ability of information sharing and direct data exchange with customers or suppliers for enterprise information management systems, thus strengthening the connection between enterprises, forming a survival chain of * * * development, and embodying the supply chain management idea of enterprises competing for survival. ERP system realizes this function accordingly, which enables decision-makers and business departments to realize joint operations across enterprises.
It can be seen that the application of ERP can effectively promote the modernization and scientificity of existing enterprise management and adapt to the increasingly competitive market requirements, and its introduction has become the general trend.
Second, what exactly is BPR? According to the definition of Professor michael hammer, the founder of BPR and Ph.D. of Harvard University in the United States, BPR is "to pursue the fundamentality and thoroughness of business process change, and hope to achieve significant improvement in cost, quality, service and speed". Later, after being supplemented and improved by different scholars, this more radical management concept gradually has rich connotations. At present, the basic connotation of BPR is to take process operation as the core, get rid of the shackles of traditional organizational division of labor, advocate customer orientation, organizational flexibility, employee empowerment and correct use of information technology, and achieve the purpose of quickly adapting to market changes, including business promotion, business optimization and business transformation in different degrees. BPR is the abbreviation of business process reengineering. There are several definitions of BPR, among which the definitions of its founders, michael hammer and James Champi, are widely known: "BPR is a fundamental thinking and thorough reconstruction of enterprise business processes, and its purpose is to make significant improvements in cost, quality, service and speed, so that enterprises can adapt to the modern business environment characterized by customers, competition and changes to the maximum extent." In this definition, "fundamental", "thoroughness" and "importance" are the core that should be paid attention to.
Several classical methods of BPR
For an enterprise, BPR is a major and complicated system engineering, which involves many activities and work in the process of project implementation. In the whole process of process reengineering, the members who participate in enterprise informatization should not only know how to carry out process reengineering and who will carry it out, but also know some methods and tools of process reengineering. If the members who participate in BPR can effectively use modern BPR tools, they can more effectively transform the problem flow in the enterprise and organically coordinate the work at all stages of BPR.
There are many technologies and methods that can be used in BPR. Here are some common techniques.
Brainstorming and Delphi method: Brainstorming and Delphi method are two useful methods to discuss the company's strategic long-term planning and decide the opportunity of enterprise reengineering. When brainstorming is used, participants are encouraged to put forward as bold ideas as possible, and at the same time, it is not allowed to criticize the opinions put forward by others. Brainstorming can help us find out the shortcomings of existing business processes and put forward fundamental transformation ideas. Some software tools can also be used to support this discussion. Participants can put forward their own suggestions and opinions on the discussion topics anonymously at the same time, and store, retrieve, annotate, classify and evaluate them according to keywords. Delphi method is often used to demonstrate the feasibility of enterprise reengineering scheme. The preliminary redesign scheme can be sent to some pre-selected information system experts for their opinions. Then, after sorting out and analyzing the feedback from experts, it will be sent to experts for the second time, so that they can consider the opinions of other experts and think deeply about the differences. In this way, after several rounds of solicitation, we can finally get a more consistent opinion. This is very useful for reducing the risk of BPR and establishing a correct information strategy.
The value chain analysis method can adopt the value chain analysis method proposed by Professor Porter of Harvard University when analyzing the business process and selecting the reformed process. Value chain analysis is a method to distinguish whether a "value activity" can bring competitiveness to enterprises. This theory was first published in Porter's paper on how to combine value chain analysis with information technology, and later developed into an important means of enterprise strategic analysis, which is also of great application value to enterprise information construction. Porter believes that in an enterprise, the activities of enterprises can be divided into two types: main activities and auxiliary activities. The main activities include purchasing logistics, manufacturing, delivery logistics, marketing and after-sales service. And auxiliary activities include top management, personnel service, technology development, logistics supply and other activities. The above activities have different specific forms because of different enterprises or industries, but all enterprises have produced the ultimate customer-oriented value from the links and value accumulation of these activities. Therefore, by decomposing the activities of an enterprise and analyzing the value of activities in each chain, we can find out which activities need to be reformed. For example, related activities can be subdivided into several ranges according to a certain business (for example, product sales can be divided into market management+advertising+sales staff management+...), from which we can find activities that can achieve differentiation and generate cost advantages.
ABC cost method, also known as activity-based costing analysis method, is mainly used to describe existing processes and analyze costs. Activity-based costing analysis is similar to the above-mentioned value chain analysis to some extent, which is to decompose the existing business and find out the basic activities. However, ABC analysis focuses on the cost of each activity, especially the labor and resources consumed in the activity.
Benchmark aiming method Benchmark aiming method can be used to set the goal and prospect of reform and determine the benchmark of process reengineering. Many industries have some successful enterprises, whose practices can be imitated by other enterprises in the industry. Therefore, some specific indicators of these enterprises can also be used as benchmarks for other enterprises. Toyota's return on investment (ROI) was once regarded as the benchmark of Japanese automobile industry. When Nissan found that its return on investment was less than half that of Toyota, they realized the seriousness of the problem. By analyzing their own business processes, they finally decided to close the factory.
Process modeling and simulation: The analysis and suggestions on the existing business processes of enterprises can be made with the help of computer software, which is enterprise information flow modeling. At present, many enterprise information flow modeling methods and corresponding software systems have come out. ARIS (Integrated Information System Architecture) method and tools were put forward by Professor Wilhelm Scheer, director of the Institute of Enterprise Management of Sall University in Germany and president of IDS-Scheer. Its design concept is to put forward an integrated framework, and integrate important concepts describing an enterprise process into the model as much as possible. IDEF0 method is the abbreviation of ICAM definition method, and it is a modeling and analysis method SADT developed by the US Air Force on the basis of ICAM (Integrated Computer Aided Manufacturing) in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
At the beginning of 1990, the IDEF user association cooperated with the American National Institute of Standards and Technology to formulate the IDEF0 standard, which was published as the American information processing standard in 1993. At present, IDEF is a standard recognized by many international organizations. In order to reduce the complexity of the project and make the project progress smoothly, the project implementation team can use modeling and analysis tools based on computer software, such as BPWIN, to model. Using these methods to model enterprise business processes, we can not only describe current business processes, diagnosis processes and design new processes, but also simulate and analyze the costs and benefits of enterprise business processes.
Among the above methods, brainstorming, Delphi method, value chain analysis and competitiveness analysis are all classic management methods and technologies, while ABC cost method, benchmarking method, process modeling and simulation are relatively new methods, especially process modeling and simulation, which provide powerful tools for BPR projects. The combination of the above methods and technologies provides a powerful tool for BPR team, which can be used in the whole business process reengineering.