Best practices in business process redesign: an overview and ...

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304 H.A. Reijers, S. Liman Mansar / Omega 33 (2005) 283 – 306 Cost Trusted party Outsourcing Interfacing Quality Flexibility Time Fig. 29. Evaluation of external party best practices. 5. Conclusion In this paper we have dealt with the best practices in implementing BPR. A framework for classifying the best practices was given. It is the result of the experience of other authors mixed with our own experience. It helps structuring the implementation of a BPR initiative. In this framework we have described 29 best practices and evaluated qualitatively their impact on the cost, quality, exibility and time criteria as de ned by Brand and van der Kolk [11]. In Table 1 we summarize within our framework for BPR the best practices’ impact and authors’ contribution to their application. Examples from real cases are also given if available. The table shows that the best practices have been applied to several types of industries, ranging from the accounts’ department at Ford industries to Fast foods, health sector organizations (Baxter health care), some manufacturing processes (Toyota, a furniture factory, a semi-conductors manufacturer), IBM credit insurance processes and various other administrative processes. Despite this wide range of applications, and our personal experience in applying these rules in service contexts (i.e. invoice processing and purchasing), we believe there is still a need to further investigate the impact and relevance of each best practice to speci c industrial segments. One recent approach in this area is by MacIntosh [50], who compares private and public sector BPR applications. These applications cover some of the best practices we discussed in this paper (integral business process technology, task automation, contact reduction, etc.). MacIntosh [50] does not question the appropriateness of the solutions in the separate industrial segments, but stresses di erences with respect to behavioral issues. On another level, Table 1 clearly shows that—except for the contributions of Buzacott [36], Seidmann and Sundara- jan [25], Dewan et al. [43] and Van der Aalst [45] to some best practices—most of the best practices lack the support of an analytical or empirical study. Additional work should point out the conditions or domain validity where a best practice would give the expected results in terms of cost/time reduction or quality/ exibility improvement. This introduces the future research directions for this paper, which are: • At rst, to further validate our BPR framework and set of best practices through an extensive survey amongst consultants and through real case studies. The survey aims at further identifying the most used best practices and the framework’s elements that are crucial for BPR. Case studies would give further insight into how the framework can be used during a BPR implementation. • Then to investigate for all best practices when, where and how to apply or not apply them. This part is concerned with giving indications to the size of the business process or the tasks involved. Also, it should study the relative impact of best practices on a business process. In this area, Foster [51] assessed the impact of BPR (essentially organizational automation impacts) in a hospital using base lining. Also, Seidmann and Sundarajan [52] studied the popular combination of the empower and the triage best practices (leading to decentralization and task consolidation). They proved, using mathematical models, that this combination is sub-optimal in many cases. • At last, to provide users with a methodology in applying best practices. This includes the classi cation of the best practices within the framework for BPR implementation as a basis (which was one of the purposes of this paper) and as a guideline to the order/conditions in which the best practices should be implemented. Of course, several authors have already investigated this area. Harrington [53] provided a streamlining of business process redesign rules. Kettinger and Teng [54] provide a framework for analyzing BPR in conjunction with several strategic dimensions. However, these approaches lack the set of measures and guidelines to the application of the best practices. We believe that in presenting in this paper the best practices together with their qualitative assessments we provide support to the practitioner of BPR dealing with the mechanics of the process. The best practices may be used as a checklist with (limited) additional guidance for the application of each of these, so that a favorable redesign of a business process becomes feasible. The checklist should be incorporated within a BPR methodology that addresses managerial aspects as well. One suggestion would be to use the ve themes listed by Maull et al. [55] that lead to e ective BPR implementation:integrating the business strategy, integrating performance measurement, creating business process architectures, involving human and organizational factors and identifying the role of information and technology.
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