Understanding Business Processes And Business Process Redesign: An Overview

Characteristics of Business Processes

1.A number of characteristics help to give a more complete definition for a business process. These are, Definability, Order, Customer, Value-adding, Embeddedness, and Cross-functionality. Please explain what they mean and elaborate on the initial motivations that lead to them.

2.Processes as a set can also be categorised or classified into types. There are four types of Business Processes. Please name and describe them.

3.In the Paper “Business Process Redesign: An Overview” by Yogesh Malhorta, a reference to Davenport and Short is made which prescribes a five-step approach to BPR. Please name the five steps and comment on the role they play in the reengineering process.

1.An order is an established request that is made by one party to the other to permits buying, selling, delivering or receiving products or services under terms and conditions that are identified. Anttila and Jussila (2013) denote that when the receiving party acknowledges an order, then it becomes a contract that is binding legally. The brand name can make a customer make an order due to the image it induces and the name sound, making an impact in order decision. Anttila and Jussila (2013) assert that product packaging enables the product to grab customer’s attention, convey specific value intention and gives the product authenticity hence leads to customers making orders. When the business reputation is positive, it influences customer order decision.

A customer is a party who consumes or receives products or services with the ability to select between different suppliers of the product or service. Personal preference is critical in leading to a business having customers due to the influence of likes, values, priorities, and morals. Economic conditions influence customer spending decisions whereby a positive or economic environment drive the business to have a customer, and the converse applies. Marketing campaigns as denoted by May, Thompson, and Hebblethwaite (2012), is a critical role in swaying consumers to a business to make a purchase. If marketing campaigns are efficiently and consistently done, then the impact is an increase in purchasing power.

Value adding is an action or activity that aids in building the worth or quality of a product or business that assist in raising profit margin. Drive that leads to value adding is to enhance the percentage of an increased financial value of a product or service and has the impact of rising incomes on the business. Altukhova, Vasileva, and Yemelyanov (2018) point out that value adding allows the business to focus on the customer since the business provides product or service through meeting customer expectations and creating a trusted market. Value adding also increase the shelf life of a product hence the business having a guarantee of the product being sold at preferred time and price.

Types of Business Processes

Embeddedness is the dependence of an occurrence of activity like the market, economy, individual and organization on its environment. Bond, ties, and links result into the connecting actor that unifies resources and events that leads to interaction between the customer and business. Being connected is an essential need for the business network because it leads to an exchange of business relationship (Bider & Perjons, 2015).

Cross-functionality is a group with diverse functional fields or multidisciplinary skills who are answerable for carrying out all stages of a task or project from inception to conclusion. Cross-functionality is majorly turned to resolve a challenge that occurs in various departments or sections in a business or organization (Cao, Thompson, & Triche, 2013). It is an approach that is arrived into to enhance innovative ideas in business due to different individuals with varied skill sets and experience bring in fresh ideas.  It also arrived at to stimulate or make the company vibrant because it gets the individuals involved to think differently through breaking monotonous daily routines as denoted by Breuker et al. (2016). It also addresses challenges swiftly due to each member of the team having a useful knowhow of solving a problem.

According to Davenport and Short (2011), business process refers to a set of logically related tasks performed to achieve a defined business outcome. In line with this, (BPR) business process redesign refers to the critical analysis and radical redesign of existing business process to achieve breakthrough improvement in the performance measure (Razaki & Aydin, 2011).This process constitutes of five steps that play a critical role in the reengineering process which are identified in terms of beginning and end point. These steps include;

Developing the business vision and processing the objectives. this step constitutes of specific business objectives such as cost reduction, improving the quality of product output that is send to the market and also time saving or reducing time. The step plays a role in the reengineering process as it enables the organization not to lose its focus (Asikhia & Awolusi, 2015). The goes further to help build an environment that has got ethical standards which will foster the business to act in accordance to the business regulation thus evading fines and unnecessary damages to the environment.

Identifying the business process to be redesigned is the second step in approaching Business process redesign (Hammer, 2011). This may involve the use of high impact approach that focuses on the most important process or those that conflict the business vision and prioritizing the in order for redesigning. This helps the planers of the business to be able to clearly take into notice the specific areas that affect the business in a negative way. It also plays the role of helping the organization to review its vision so that it can correct on the loopholes that existed within the plan of the business.

Five-Step Approach to Business Process Redesign

The third step is to understand and measure the existing processes. this plays the role of helping us to avoid repeating old mistakes and being able to provide a baseline or foundation for future improvements in the business. The basis of reengineering process in a business is to be able to be efficient. Doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting new result is impossible. This step ensures that in the process to come up with more successful outcome, previous mistakes are avoided as it provides a clear understanding of the existing process and act as a magnifier to the business holistically.

Identifying information technology levers is the fourth step in approaching (BPR). Creating an awareness of the capabilities of information technology in the organization to help being updated with the resent inventions and be at par with other competing companies thus enhancing productivity and profit (Chen & Tsai, 2018). The changing world of business calls for being fully informed of the new advancement in technology so that when reengineering the BPR, all current technics are involved so that the business can act to the standards of the general market and depart from the traditional methods. It also influences the process by creating awareness to the current technological world.

The fifth step of approaching the (BPR) according to Davenport (2013) is designing and building a prototype of the new process: actual design purports not to be taken as the end of the (BPR process. Rather, it should be taken as a prototype (sample) with successful iterations. This metaphor is capable of aligning the Business Process Reengineering approach so as to bring quick delivery of results, involvement and satisfaction of all the stakeholders and clients. It enables the business organization to not only concentrate on production goods but also keep in touch with the existing social responsibility and sustainability that will help build the reputation of the organization. The prototype acts as a guide that can help redefine and come up with other more innovative ideas in the business. In conclusion, the five steps in approaching the BPR are crucial as they play rudimentary role in guiding the existing business to experience success.

3.Business process begins long before the main operations of the business. One might argue that they begin at the conception of the business idea. Bang and Midelfart (2017) define a business process as a structured set of activities designed to produce a specific output. Given the wide range activities in a business, anything could simply fall to be known as a business process, thus, business process has been divided into four major categories

Management Processes- Most organizations use management teams to manage and coordinate their business. According to Wageman and Hackman (2010), the management team is “a group of individuals, each of whom has a personal responsibility for leading some part of an organization, [and] who are interdependent for the purpose of providing overall leadership for a larger enterprise. Managers typically set goals and priorities and make decisions that are vital to the organization. They monitor ongoing processes within the company to ensure that everything operates smoothly. Management focuses on creating the organization’s values, such as determining its vision and mission, defining strategic goals and objectives, and developing a strategic plan (Ostadi, Aghdasi, & Alibabaei, 2011). The objective of top management is to analyze the market environment and calculating the possibilities that the strategic goals of the organization being transformed into an actual business plan.

Operational process- Business operations vary according to the type of industry, size etc. The operational process of a business made up of the main components that bring the basic income stream. Marketing, sales, product promotion are some of the parts of an operational process. Operations view the relationship between the different departments of a company. Their information flow, shared resources, time relationship and even location (Bititci, 2011). This way a company is able to allocate resource appropriately to avoid high cost. Those resources that can be shared, for example, human labour and equipment are shared to avoid high costs (Ostadi, Aghdasi, & Alibabaei, 2011).

Information flow is the measure of how fast information flows between activities or departments, for example between order processing and credit control or between sales and procurement departments. After identifying these relationships, operations then identifies closely coupled activities that could be traced as a business process. The role of operational management translates the business plan into action plans. They include;

Supporting process - These processes assist the business process. Accounting, human resource management, technical support and customer services are some of the examples. These processes do not contribute directly to production but are completely necessary for the operational process to run (Kræmmergaard, 2017). They impose regulatory constraints, governance and proper conduct on product production. The financial department supports the manufacturing and operational process, financing operations, acquiring raw materials, location etc. The role of customer services is to maintain a good relationship between the company and their clients. Administration and IT support are responsible for all the administrative work in the organization such as cleaning, security and maintenance. IT support integrates all the functional areas by developing an effective information system enabling employees and customers to perform online interactions via the internet according to Bang and Midelfart (2017).

Manufacturing processes- These departments deal with the making of the actual product that the organization sells (Anttila & Jussila, 2013). The role of this functional area is to determine a product manufacturing plan based on the information provided by the sales department. Material management assists the manufacturing processes by purchasing appropriate raw materials and other components in the manufacturing. Research and development functional area assist s by conducting research on the possibilities and finding solutions to arising processes during manufacturing. Development of a new product or the improvement of an existing one can only be done using information received form research and development and sales and marketing

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