We live in an era of globalization where companies do everything possible to stand out from the competition using every tool that is possible to improve and gain a competitive advantage. Every time new administrative strategies are implemented and it is that companies need to evolve to the degree that everything that serves to improve is welcome in their business environment.
A new form of administration is reengineering, but what is it? for serving us? It is good to define these concepts to know the importance of this tool in the organizational field.
For Michael Hammer and James Champy (1944) who are considered the main exponents of this current through the book Reengineering define that “Reengineering is the fundamental rethinking and radical redesign of business processes to achieve dramatic improvements within critical measures and contemporary performance, such as cost, quality, service and speed ”.
In the previous definition proposed by Hammer and Champy, there are four keywords: Fundamental, Radical, Dramatic and Processes.
These words are key because:
- A reengineering will look for why something fundamental is being done. Changes in the design should be radical (from the root and not superficial). The expected improvements must be dramatic (not a few percentages). Changes should focus only on the processes.
In a few words, reengineering will help us to redesign processes where a process is those activities that through inputs create a product of value for the customer. There comes a time when our designed processes no longer respond to our current competitive environment, which gives us a reason for a process innovation to exist and we do this through reengineering. It is not about improving what already exists, but rather we must put aside what already exists in order to start over, that is, reinvent how we can do the work we have been doing.
For some companies, they might think that reengineering implies cutbacks, but this is not the case, reengineering is to improve processes, it is based on work processes seeking highly surprising results. It must be taken into account that when applying it, it brings us risks that can be economic, personal or organizational, however everything can be a success.
Innovation through reengineering can be seen from two perspectives, on the one hand reengineering, which is a radical change in processes, and on the other hand, process innovation where we are involved in the new process design and the execution of that change in technological dimension., human and organizational.
So reengineering becomes a functional element for companies since it gives us the opportunity to start from scratch, it is clearer that it has to focus on processes and that it must also be fast to expect spectacular results in short times, having a global perspective of the organization and not only by parts.
To finish we need to reengineer an organization when performance is low in the face of our competition, a severe crisis such as a market crash, technologies change through globalization, we want to become a leader in the market, or, where appropriate, face aggressive competition. Thus, through reengineering we can innovate to achieve a competitive advantage and offer higher quality products or services to our clients.
