We can understand the concept of company by referring to it as a set of systems that interact and are geared towards meeting the organization's objectives.
However, for some years now we have an approach that has given a new meaning to business administration, impacting the social and technological system of business organization; I mean the process approach.
From this approach, we must understand the company through the processes it performs to obtain a product of value for the customer. Hence we can take the process as the essence of the business. But what is a business process? According to Daniel Morris and Joel Brandon, leading American consultants in Reengineering, a process is defined as “an activity that is carried out in a series of stages to produce a specific result or a coherent group of specific results ”.
By thinking of business as processes rather than functions, managers can focus their efforts to simplify processes and create value with less effort, rather than focusing on reducing the size of functions to simply reduce costs.
The reduction of costs will occur naturally, when activities that do not add value to the processes are eliminated and as the level of efficiency of the processes increases.
Now, during the last two decades, two of the most debated topics in the Peruvian business and academic environments have been reengineering and Total Quality Management (TQM). Let's see how these issues relate to business processes.
Reengineering essentially consists of analyzing and modifying the basic work processes in a business, aiming to increase its ability to compete in the market.
So, to develop reengineering, the processes that are generated in the company must be understood, but taking into account that when defining the company processes that are going to be subject to the redesign, the selection of these should be prioritized according to the problems that they generate, their importance in the company and the impact on the customer.
Regarding TQM, it consists of a philosophy supported by a series of practices, tools and methods aimed at leading an organization to excellence, with pillars focusing on customers and satisfying their needs, seeking participation total staff, and fundamentally, the continuous improvement of processes to raise the quality of products and services.
As we can see, the process is the frame of reference in which both reengineering and TQM work. An essential business process creates value through the competitive capacity it provides to an organization. Important processes are those that the business strategy has identified as critical to match or outperform the competition.
Consequently, with these concepts, any improvement in a business is more conveniently conducted within the context of an effort to renew the process.
