SUMMARY
This article will give us an approach to how business processes in a company are important from a technological point of view, in order to achieve a better understanding of the business and many times this will represent the opportunity to improve them through Business Process Reengineering..
The automation of processes reduces errors, ensuring that they always behave in the same way and providing elements that allow them to visualize their status.
Once we know our business processes and use reengineering to make them more efficient, we will be able to align the appropriate technology to our company, with the security of obtaining the greatest competitive advantage.
Keywords: process, business processes, BPR, reengineering, competitive advantage, process improvement.
INTRODUCTION
Today, technology is a critical factor in the success or failure of a business. Companies that successfully incorporate new software and systems into their information infrastructure position themselves to achieve sustained competitive advantages.
In today's business environment, that means implementing systems that provide simplified, low-cost operations. Other critical capabilities include the ability to communicate information on time and accurately to the growing mobile workforce, continually improving employee productivity and the ability to protect systems integrity and intellectual property.
As business managers grow in number in search of a business process reengineering (Business Process Reenginering) as a measure of applying Information Technology to their businesses, the belief also grows that an improvement in the processes which includes some IT component, will allow to give the company competitive advantages in addition to providing quality products and services to its customers.
By first aligning a company to its strategies in its business processes, seeking to improve efficiency through their systematic management (BPR), through modeling, automating, integrating, monitoring and optimizing continuously, it will create the perfect environment by then, apply the updated information technologies and according to the needs, to automate these tasks.
In no way can we think of implementing an information technology in the foreground, without first knowing perfectly, what are the business processes that affect a company in its people, policies, procedures, production and product, otherwise, we would be falling in the error of aligning the company to technology and not technologies to key business processes.
METHODOLOGY
For the preparation of this article, the digital database of the Tecnológico de Monterrey library was consulted, emphasizing key issues for the reengineering of processes in information technologies, as well as articles from magazines located in the digital library.
The digital databases consulted were:
- Business Source PremierIEEEXploreProQuest ABI / INFORM GlobalThe ACM Digital LibraryEmerald Group Publishing Limited
In the same way, some knowledge and ideas expressed here by the author are basic notions taken from courses such as information systems, SCM (Supply Chain Management), as well as readings of computer-related magazines.
Thompson, RJ and Redstone, L (1997) define a process as a series of interconnected activities in search of a purpose. In a business context, the purpose of the processes will be to provide your internal customers with their requirements in a timely manner. The most basic representation of a process can be
seen in figure 1.
Figure 1:
The inputs and outputs of a process are usually quite straightforward in identifying. The inputs are what is necessary in a process as “raw material”, or in the case that the process is a service, the trigger that starts the next process. The outputs are the product or service that the processes produce. The controls and resources are a bit more complicated, since they vary according to the type of business environment.
A business process is a complete and dynamically coordinated set of transactional and collaborative activities that delivers value to customers or is responsible for meeting other strategic goals of the company (Christoph F Strnadl,
2006).
As business managers grow in number in search of a reengineering (Business Process Reenginering) as a measure of applying Information Technology to their businesses, the belief also grows that an improvement in the processes which includes some component of IT will allow to give the company competitive advantages in addition to providing quality products and services to its clients (Vishanth Weerakkody, C. Matthew Hinton, 1999).
Attaran and Mohsen (May 2004) found that the extensive IT and interconnectivity networks that arose from the adoption of standards and Integrated Services Digital Networks (ISDN) have become a major force affecting the businesses of IT. fundamental way.
Thus, the infrastructure helps organizations not only in the automation of economic activities, but also in the reform and readjustment of their business processes.
IT infrastructure is defined as the degree to which data and applications over communication networks can be shared and reached for use by an organization (Boardman, J., 1997).
As can be seen in figure 2, the IT infrastructure is the “technological skeleton” with which the company bases its strategic operation in search of making its information flow.
A network infrastructure refers to the communication capabilities of networks that help share IT resources within and across company boundaries. For example, using integrated communication networks, such as email, video conferencing and computer-to-computer links such as an EDI (Electronic data interchange), information can be easily shared, manipulated and used by corporate applications (Yates and Benjamin, 1991; Madnick, 1991).
Speaking of Data Integration, in coordination with the activities of an organization, the different business units require access to consistent data about the activities of the different departments. By increasing the standardization of the definition of data, codes and formats, organizations can easily manage their IT activities and compare their performance with similar and comparable functional units (Goodhue et al., 1988, p. 389).
CHAPTER 3 "Reengineering in business processes"
BPR by definition is the rapid and radical redesign of organizational structures, value-added and strategic business processes, which support the optimization of work flow and productivity in an organization (Soliman and Youssef, 1998, p. 894).
Figure 3 shows the cycle of a plotted BPR.
Business process re-engineering (BPR) is a management technique to radically transform organizations for a dramatically important improvement and since then the pioneering authors in the
Business processes convincingly discuss the critical role of Information Technology in BPR, due to its impact on a company's business strategy (Deb Sledgianowski, Jerry Luftman, 2007).
To better understand process reengineering, we first need to know our processes, by mapping them. Process mapping is based on a precise strategy to reconstruct organizational actions in a specific focus for analysis. It is an AS IS moment, where the processes are reconstructed in a series of actions made by the actors directly involved in the process. In the same way, the map must clearly show the relationships between activities, personnel, information and objects involved in the work flow. (Stefano Biazzo, 2000).
So our process analysis must contain a realistic structure of what actually happens in the processes, that is, we must consider identifying the actors, interviewing individuals or examining documents that describe standard operating procedures to obtain:
- the type of information that the actors receive from whom they receive it, how they receive it, how they processed the different types of information, and e) to whom they delivered results (Delvin Grant, 2002).
Figure 4 shows how a business process is broken down in order to improve activity.
Once we align the company with its goal or objective to be achieved, that is, in search of satisfying its business strategy in an adequate way, we must adapt an adequate implementation model, so that perfectly reaching the product or service to the end customer, is done in the most efficient or low-cost way possible. A process redesign or reengineering model accepted by its great perception is the Supply Chain Operations Reference model or simply SCOR model (Pnina Soffer, Yair Wand, 2005).
When we manage to align these business processes to the goal, it is when we can talk about the capacity of a company that can be visualized in the value chain, and in order to obtain that ability to continuously redesign its value chain and modify its human assets, structural, financial and technological, to achieve a competitive advantage over its competitors (Oswald A. Mascarenhas, Ram Kesavan, Michael Bernacchi, 2004).
CONCLUSIONS
Definitely, information technologies play an increasingly important role in facilitating the introduction of new products or services, in improving operational processes, and in guiding managerial decision-making.
All businesses are transformed by the use of technology, and the competitiveness that such adjustment can generate will depend on the level of connection or alignment between technology and the real requirements of the business; that is, the level of association of technology with a change approach.
Hence the importance of establishing the business processes that will determine the way in which the company operates, otherwise, the panorama only becomes more complex when trying to first implement an information technology, and then define the processes of the business. This would only lead to high investment costs for information technology.
As we know, information technologies do not determine the business processes of a company, they are enablers to make the way in which they are carried out more efficient.
Organizations rely on their business processes to be guided in this complex scenario. However, in many organizations, given its complexity, there is an important difference between the processes that should be in place and the processes that are actually operating the business.
The link between business processes and value generation leads some practitioners to see business processes as the workflows that carry out the tasks of an organization. Business processes can be seen as a cookbook to run a business and achieve the goals defined in the business strategy of the company.
For our process analysis to be successful, it must contain a realistic structure of what really happens in the processes, to determine the opportunities that the company has to improve, and undertake the best possible alignment towards the value chain.
When we manage to align these business processes to the goal, it is when we can talk about the ability of a company to continuously redesign its value chain and modify its human, structural, financial and technological assets, to achieve a competitive advantage over its competitors. which is really the main reason why a business process becomes the most fundamental part on which a company is based.
The computerized administration of a company through information technologies will be of no use to us, if before we do not have properly defined business processes, in which the company supports its correct operation.
BIBLIOGRAPHIC REFERENCES
- Attaran, Mohsen, "Exploring the relationship between information technology and business process reengineering", Information & Management, Vol. 41, (May 2004). Business Source Premier. (Consulted in October 2007) Boardman, J., «Corporate intranets and business process management: a challenge for systems engineering», Computing & Control Engineering Journal, Vol. 8, (December 1997). IEEEXplore. (Consulted in September 2007) CF Strnadl, «Aligning Business and IT: The Process-Driven Architecture Model», Computer as a Tool, 2005-EUROCON 2005.The International Conference, Vol.2, (2005). IEEEXplore. (Consulted in September 2007) Deb Sledgianowski, Jerry Luftman, "IT-Business Strategic Alignment Maturity: A Case Study", Journal of Cases on Information Technology, Vol. 7, (2005). ProQuest ABI / INFORM Global.(Consulted in September 2007) Delvin Grant, "A wider view of business process reengineering", Communications of the ACM, Vol.45, (2002). The ACM Digital Library. (Consulted in September 2007) Fawzy Soliman, Mohamed A. Youssef, "The role of SAP software in business process re-engineering", International Journal of Operations & Production Management, Vol. 18, (1998).IEEEXplore. (Consulted in September 2007) Goodhue, DL, Quillard, JA, and Rockart, JF, "Managing the data resources: a contingency perspective", MIS Quarterly, Vol. 12, (1988). The ACM Digital Library. (Consulted in September 2007) Oswald A. Mascarenhas, Ram Kesavan, Michael Bernacchi, "Customer value-chain involvement for co-creating customer delight", Journal of Consumer Marketing, Vol. 21, (2004). Emerald Group Publishing Limited.(Consulted in September 2007) Pnina Soffer, Yair Wand, "On the notion of soft-goals in business process modeling", Business Process Management Journal, Vol. 11, (2005). Emerald Group Publishing Limited. (Consulted in September 2007) Stefano Biazzo, "Approaches to business process analysis: a review", Business Process Management Journal, Vol.6, (2000). Emerald Group Publishing Limited. (Consulted in September 2007) Thompson, RJ, Redstone, L., «Business process management-maintaining control in an environment of rapid change», Factory 2000 - The technology Exploitation Process at Fifth International Conference, (April 1997). IEEEXplore. (Consulted in September 2007) Vishanth Weerakkody, C. Matthew Hinton, "Exploiting information systems and technology through business process improvement", Knowledge and Process Management, Vol.6, (1999).ProQuest ABI / INFORM Global. (Consulted in September 2007) Yates, J. and Benjamin, RI, «The past and present as a window on the future», in Scott Morton, MS (Ed.), The Corporation of the 1990s: Information Technology and Organizational Transformation, (1991). ProQuest ABI / INFORM Global. (Consulted in September 2007)
