FREE online courses on Business Needs and ERP - BPR and ERP - The Role of
Information Technology in BPR
In the past several years, information technology has been
recognized as a major force in reengineering. It is typically identified as an
enabler of the changes required. That is, reengineers develop a conceptual
approach to changing the business processes expecting that IT will make it
possible. For example, reengineering the sales order process means providing a
wide range of products, scheduling customer and financial information online to
the order entry people. This is not possible without an integrated networked
information system.
ERP has changed the nature of the reengineering process in
two ways: first, it provides a system that is integrated and based on best
practices. It makes available, as a matter of course, many of the improvements
that companies identify in the process of reengineering. In this respect, it
serves as the technology enabler identified by most reengineers and writers on
the subject.
Second and more importantly, ERP is a driver, not merely an
enabler of sustantive change. ERP forces the implementation team to specify how
it wants to organize and run the business in an integrated way, at a detailed
level. Many companies have not done this and continue to operate with mixed and
often conflicting organizational structures, processes and standards. This lack
of clarity and integration is often based on history or on culture. The
successful implementation of ERP requires you to define these elements.
ERP will not actually conduct the reengineering for you, but
will trigger you to do it for yourself. With this force in hand, even companies
who simply wanted to replace their 20-year old legacy systems that cannot
communicate with one another, will do some level of reengineering because of the
structure of ERP itself and probably more than they imagined was needed.
With the advent of ERP, information systems have, more than
ever, become a major force in creating efficient and effective business
processes. This change in status, from support function to key driver of change
carries with it several significant implications:
- You
must decide when to reengineer your business
- IS and
user roles change-dramatically
- The IS
implementation process changes-dramatically
-
Implementation skill becomes a new, distinct competency.
