Competence and impact of tools for BPR
Introduction
Since the emergence of Business process reengineering (BPR), a large number of software tools have emerged to help BPR efforts. However, studies show that the lack of user-friendly, yet flexible, software to support BPR is seen as a major problem [3], [13]. It is surprising that despite the discrepancy between user needs and available tools, there have been only a few studies about BPR tools. In order to provide a basis for evaluation and proper selection of BPR tools, research is needed to examine their features and their contribution to BPR success.
Since BPR tools have many similarities with Computer-aided software engineering (CASE) tools, the failures of CASE tool have led to concern about similar failures of BPR tools. This research, therefore, focuses on the following questions.
- 1.
Which features are important in BPR tools?
- 2.
How important are BPR tools in BPR success?
- 3.
Does the failure of CASE tools also portend similar failure for BPR tools?
To answer these questions, important features of BPR tools and CASE tools experiences were identified through a literature survey. A model was built to explain the relationship between BPR tools’ success and determinants of success such as features, costs, and organizational conditions.
Section snippets
BPR perspectives
Hammer and Champy [9] defined BPR as “the fundamental rethinking and radical redesign of business processes to achieve dramatic improvements in critical, contemporary measures of performance, such as cost, quality, service, and speed”. Thereafter, various BPR approaches and methodologies have been proposed [1].
In addition to BPR, some efforts to automate workflow have emerged. Workflow automation aims to improve work processes through developing applications for managing, measuring, and
BPR tools success model
Here we attempted to determine those success factors for a BPR project that are linked to tools. These success factors were used to build a testable model that covers key variables. Grover et al. [8] have identified important problems that people generally encounter when they try to implement BPR. They found that those more directly related to the conduct of a project, such as process delineation and project management, were perceived to be highly related to project success. Since BPR tools can
Empirical test
In order to test our model, a questionnaire was designed and sent to practitioners who had participated in BPR projects and used BPR tools in those projects.
Limitations of the study
We see some limitations in this research. First, the questionnaire required both BPR tools experience and BPR project experience. Although a list server specializing in BPR offers a good sample through which we can access the people with such experience there is a possibility of a sampling bias. However, list servers usually have a variety of subscribers, which mitigates the possible bias caused by the sampling. The demographics of respondents that is balanced in their background confirms this.
Conclusions
This research examined the important determinants of BPR tools success and the relationship between BPR tools and BPR success. The result shows that BPR tools are different from CASE tools in various aspects. Costs, long learning time, and organizational resistance in BPR tools do not seem to be as critical as for CASE tools. BPR tools are linked to effectiveness of BPR projects rather than efficiency of BPR projects. Interestingly, unlike CASE tools, change of work has a positive impact on BPR
Il Im is a doctoral candidate in the Information and Operations Management Department at the Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California. He received BBA and MBA from Seoul National University, Korea. His current research interests include information systems for knowledge management and IS impacts on individual performance and behavior.
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Il Im is a doctoral candidate in the Information and Operations Management Department at the Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California. He received BBA and MBA from Seoul National University, Korea. His current research interests include information systems for knowledge management and IS impacts on individual performance and behavior.
Omar A. El Sawy is Professor of Information Systems at the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California. His professional and research interests include redesigning business processes and electronic value chains in turbulent environments, and the improvement of knowledge management practices. His writings have appeared in both information systems and management journals. He has lectured and consulted internationally, has been a Fulbright Scholar in Finland, and an information systems advisor for the United Nations Development Programme. He was previously with NCR Corporation. He holds a BSEE from Cairo University, an MBA from the American University in Cairo, and a Ph.D. from Stanford Business School.
Alexander Hars is an Assistant Professor of Information and Operations Management at the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California. His current research interests are knowledge infrastructures, enterprise modeling and natural language processing. He is the founder of a multilingual collaborative web-based knowledge management infrastructure for information systems research.